Corpus Incomplete In Empire Phantom

Name's Sophia Saber.

Designation: Combat equipment of Allward Cooperative, CEAC#5368.

Illegal cloning facilities, irradiated zones, "terrorist" dens...

I arrive, I open fire, destroy everything in sight, and extract.

Allward Coop. is the hand of the Communal Council and receives work bonds from it by dealing with shit the councillors want gone.

There was a time when I would have hated with passion working for these two entities.

Now I didn't care, I no longer had bits that made me hateful.

There's just 30% of me left after I took a close-range hit from a shotgun-type weapon.

Allward offered me to save my life for a price... I'd have to work for them until the debt is repaid.

The debt isn't even monetary, it's one of these 'gratitude bonds' with a value that was supposed to be decided by 'the community'.

Sixty years of power consolidation and the cooperatives were granted the status of 'the community'.

Twenty more years of consolidation and cooperatives became 'represented' by the people in the upper part of the previously

unofficial power hierarchy.

Hierarchy that according to the 'values of the community' shouldn't be there or not to that extent at least.

Look, I just want you to know exactly how much I'm fucked, some context is required.

So, like, I have to work for Allward Coop. until the up 'feels like' I've repaid them for saving my life.

So, like, a little less than forever, I guess?

Ah well.

There was a time I would be in sorrow and regret about this, but, y'know, bits gone.

Exactly the reason I 'chose' this.

Only about 30% of my brain was intact after the <...> and when I was given the offer, I could barely think.

No bits to scream in terror with mention of Allward's 'help', no memory to remember of their crimes against employees, against humanity and other species...

All that was left was some half-apathetic survival instinct.

A. k. a. "I guess it's better to live than not?"...

I woke up a year later in Allward's facility:

- Missing brain parts replaced with a tactical processor.

- Remaining flesh encased within a container and a bio-titanium mesh.

- With a 'heart' that resembles more like a miniature nuclear reactor than an actual organ. It might actually be a reactor of sorts.

- Brand new, scary limbs useful if you wanted to kill a whole bunch of overtuned combat clones or unwanted civilians alike.

- What's left of reproductive organs, removed.

- Etc., etc.

I resembled more of a machine with only half of my horribly scarred face not covered by armour mesh - but most of the time behind a mask.

A few weeks of software configuration and processor integration with the remnant biological brain and I was sent out.

My first mission was to aid a siege of a metallurgical facility that was the final stronghold of the Southern New Community movement.

I spent weeks hunting the hopeless mutineers in the tunnel complex under the facility, getting through mined passages, surviving grenades, lasers, good ol' bullet fire, once a fire extinguishing system rewired to spray acid instead of extinguishant...

The armour mesh made me pretty resilient, but it's not like I didn't need a month in the repair facility after.

I scored over a hundred kills.

I think my old self would have gone mad a hundred times there.

It was lunar...

The up liked my performance.

I was but one of many humans similarly transformed into killing machines, but due to 'luck' - if you can call it that - my biology achieved a staggering synchronization score with Allward's technology.

I think it has something to do with the precise amount of brain cells that survived.

And the type of the remaining cells.

My natural brain seamlessly communicated with the tactical processor and that made me pretty scary, apparently.

The up liked scary.

The up needed scary, to provide the ruthlessness, ahem, I mean "performance" that Allward Coop. boasted of.

So I've become the up's & the MC's - mission control's - *fave* and was sent to dozens of insane operations that would have been the end of 'lesser' cyborgs.

When I worked in team with them, sometimes I'd be only one to return from whatever lunar place we been sent to.

See, along with the expectation-exceeding synchronization, I still had that "I guess it's better to live than not?" in me, that let me prevail.

It's the reason why they even made abominations like me.

That 30% or whatever of humanity gave the killtech a non-insignificant boost in performance...

My emotionless brain remnant also observed a fraction of hope deep in itself somewhere, a tiniest hope that things through some miracle would turn for the 'better'.

I mean, I didn't care about the 'better', but I did find the existence of this vestigial hope mildly intriguing.

So yeah, scary cyborg, survives anything, a secret pet of the up - I was so messed up that the marketing block of the cooperative wanted as few people as possible to know of me.

Though, there were whispers of the so-called "Allward's Wraith", that might as well could have been me.

Anyway, the current mission...

"CEAC#5368, MC wants to drop you off a kilometre from the objective."

"We'll be there in approx. 15 minutes."

"OK. Equipment?"

I was in a helicopter, talking to a handler for the current mission. Some girl I never met before.

"Just one item this time... Hmm... The shit, it's just some numbers on the form."

"Model 8884. Does that mean anything to you?"

My processor got busy for a whole 0.5 seconds trying to retrieve data through the network adapter but returned nothing.

Odd, considering I had access to possibly the most complete equipment database on this planet.

Ah well.

"Must be custom-made for the mission."

"I think so, yes. It says here that it should be able to destroy 'the object'."

"There's no other equipment?"

"Well, it's in *this* box."

She pointed at a case in the cargo compartment.

Oh.

Not use to carrying much else if I'll have to lug around something of this size.

Still, no 'nades, no 'party dust' - a. k. a. what we in 'the industry' call standard kit of chemical weaponry - not even a knife?

Mildly intriguing.

Ah well.

Soon the helicopter landed in a prepared area in the clearing of the forest.

The clearing seemed to be recently created.

It was comfortable, I've gotten used to being dropped off with a "projectile-resistant" parachute in the middle of a swamp or a ruin full of irradiated glass, or someplace comparably fucked.

Just your classic commercial genetically modified evergreen forest here.

Easy.

Well, the tactical processor wasn't very happy with forest combat, but when was it happy with the terrain?

There was maybe one time when I was hunting unarmed "terrorists" in a glassed field with no cover in sight.

Oh, the processor *liked* that one.

But anyway... I think uncontrollably slipping into the memories of previous missions is a symptom of my brain remnant degrading...

Sorry about that.

Yes, so, the current mission.

I threw the case out of the helicopter and jumped out after it.

The handler followed and I waited until she set up a communication antenna for a secure link with the MC.

"Baby, I'm sad to send you on this one, truly."

I said I was a 'fave'. I was nicknamed 'baby' by the head of MC, who I was talking with right now.

He was... An awful person. Even among others of this abhorrent cooperative.

"OK. What's the objective and what is Model 8884?"

"Have you looked at it? Honestly, I know about as much as you."

The handler gave me the code and I unlocked the case.

Woah.

It was a rifle, I assumed.

And it screamed 'experimental'.

Zero ergonomic details, just an oblong black, angled thing, no sights, just a rudimentary handle and trigger.

Nothing resembling safety measures either.

I picked it up.

Processor warned me about my artificial muscles being almost at a capacity.

"Lab rats say all you need to do is hit the object once. Sending visual of the object..."

It looked like... Well, not much. Neglected electrical transformer... Thing? Accumulator stack? Substation? Something like that.

I've tried my best to understand what I saw.

Considering height of trees in the visual it was like a four story building, it had antennae, rough sides, gray and stained paint job.

There appeared to be a number painted on it, but it was censored out.

Odd.

Something was off about the visual, but I couldn't understand what, so dedicated 99% of processing power to analyzing-

"Hey, hey, you'll see it live soon."

The visual was cut off.

"The up's asses are on a hedgehog about this mission and giving you any data."

"Really freaked out about you trying to analyze it just now."

"Just approach the object at about 300-metre distance, fire the umm, model whatever at it."

"See the trigger? Aim the long part at the object and fire. That's what lab rats are telling."

"Can't send you a manual or anything, really, but it's designed to be stupid simple."

"Baby, this thing's insane, I'm looking at the schematics..."

"But yeah, otherwise it's just a big rifle despite what it rocks inside."

"300 metre range? Any blowback I should keep in mind or is this MIA mission?"

"Baby, no, no, no, me and the boys 'n girls at MC love you, you know?"

"I don't have to tell you sweet lies, that's why I like you so much, baby."

"If it was MIA mission, I'd tell you, really, you're big girl, you'd understand."

"But yeah we'd like you to come back in one piece, you know us."

"Repairs ain't free and losing you, oh, that'd break my heart."

"I must say though, uh, lab rats and the up are shifty about this. No info to you, just here's one creepy gun, aim 'n fire at the object."

*DISABLING ANALYSIS TOOLS*

*DISABLING MEMORY ENHANCEMENTS*

"Huh?"

I grimaced as I felt half-blind without the processor's analytic capabilities. They've turned it off, remotely.

Okay?

"Sorry, baby, the up ordered it. You only got basic visuals of the object and bio memory for this mission."

"The less you know and remember about the object, the better."

"The data that you might get back with is more dangerous to my and baby's asses than the mission itself, eya?"

"So we're limiting how much you can carry so-to-speak."

"Honestly the up wanted go MIA on you, but I got your back, I convinced them to let you come back."

"OK."

That's one odd mission.

"Thing is, I don't know if you'll return. I don't know shit, honest."

"Expect anything. That's what's good about no data, no expectations either, that should help."

"But yeah, if you do come back, I won't let them scrap you. You're a good girl and made me very happy many times."

"Don't want to have to work with the usual cloneshits, you my baby, heh."

"But enough chatting, repeat the objective."

"Approach the object until the range is 300 metres. Aim at the object. Pull Model 8884's trigger. Return to the start point?"

"Yeah, that's right, baby."

"Lab rats say 'if it won't work' decrease range in decrements of... 33 metres and trying firing again. Huh."

"That until the object is destroyed. You should see 'something' happening if 'it works'... If you don't, it didn't work."

"OK. Does it have a critical point I need to target? Will the rifle-"

"No details, baby. Aim n' fire, that should do it."

"OK."

Odd, odd, odd.

*RECEIVING POSITIONING DATA*

*UPDATING POSITIONING TOOLS*

"That's the coordinates."

"I'm only reading errors and NaNs."

"You need to read the compass."

"Oh. Yeah, I sense the approximate direction."

"Good. Just follow the compass, the visuals, uh, won't help you here, apparently."

"Distance's about 900 metres but it might take some time to reach the object."

"Just follow the compass, the lab rats adjusted it for this mission.

Odd, odd, odd, odd.

Mildly intriguing, even.

"Off you go, and remember: I love ya, heh. Succeed and I get a bank and an accomplishment bond, the good one."

"OK."

I barely cared about my life OR death, let alone his success and he *knew* that.

I followed their orders because... The thought always trailed away there.

Perhaps conditioning?

Ah well. Didn't care either way.

The handler cut off the connection.

I nodded to the handler and started marching at a comfortable pace - no time limit was established - towards the vague position of 'the object'.

The mossy ground sunk under my feet from the combined weight of my altered body and the mysterious way-too-big Model 8884.

As always both of my eyes - prosthetic and biological - were shooting glances looking for threats.

Nothing.

Just rows and rows of evergreens.

I switched a mode on my artificial eye to try and see deeper into the forest.

I did, but I saw nothing but more trees.

Cool.

Easy.

Wait...

I squinted at the rows of trees.

1... 2... 3... 4... 5...

1... 2... 3... 4... 5...

1... 2... 3... 4... 5...

1... 2... 3... 4... 5...

Okay, sure, evergreens look kind of same-ish when they are grown like this.

I assumed it was a commercial forest: Evenly positioned tree rows that would be picked up by the foresting machines in a decade or so.

But it was like... Like... Like a video game. Or a mirror trick.

There were exactly five different trees in this forest, repeated over and over, in all directions.

Odd.

The copies of the trees were identical to the ridiculous detail, this one had a branch at 0.33 metre height from the ground, that one had a distinct shape of lichen growing on northern side...

Then I realized I don't know where the north is, it could as well be the southern side of the damn copied tree.

On the other hand, I could feel with centimetre precision the supposed location of 'the object'.

My compass is fucked, huh?

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Right.

[ NO DATA ]

I've been in an abandoned biotech facility infested with 'organoid' creatures creepier than any monster a horror movie could come up with.

Through the simple fact that they were real.

I've been in a sinking antimatter submarine, fighting fanatics of some cult.

Their screams, I could remember all too well them yelling in mad voices 'Baal' and 'Rockefeller'.

Just remembering *the screams* makes my eye twitch.

I was on the moon once! It was, as it is said, pretty fucking lunar.

Helium processing facilities with their milk-white-skinned and bald-headed worker clones working knee-deep in their own excrement...

It's good that I was 'too cool' to get conditions like PTSD of the weak hundred-percent-bio humans.

All of that would break anyone, but at least it made *sense*.

Reality is a scary place, but it's... Real.

This didn't feel real.

*DAMAGE WARNING*

What is this, radiation? I was highly resistant to it but I'd still get warnings when those *irritating* particles would start making holes in my molecular structure.

No, I was getting damage, but probably not by particles, the damage visual displayed microscopic fractures across my body.

I was shattering like a glass statue, that's what it looked like.

But slowly. I could last a week until this damage impaired my performance.

Ah well.

I did not change my pace.

The unreal forest continued around me, and damage warnings quieted down as the tactical processor accepted 'the fracturing' as an unavoidable fact of the situation.

Meanwhile, I tried my hardest to understand, like, what the fuck does this mean?

Is it like an overpriced movie set gone wrong? Optical illusion?

No. This is real.

I mean, at some point science fiction that I used to like stopped trying to catch up to technological and sociological advancements.

There's not much to go to get ahead of the present.

We couldn't time travel or go FTL, but other stuff? Yeah, kind of.

We even met 'aliens' as disappointing as it was.

Not even once, really, so twice the disappointment.

I mean, I technically died, and yet somehow I'm a cyborg killing machine now, like in that one famous 40s video game.

Science, zero fiction.

But now I was in something real yet completely unknown to me.

It *could* have been an optical trick.

Movie theaters really got *creative* after cinematography was practically pushed out of mainstream relevance by other forms of media.

They called it Cinema Renaissance and shit was pretty cool and pretty wild.

Once I got to experience what it would be like to have a 360° vision.

Psychedelics can't compare.

So yeah, this could be something like that.

But what about Model 8884? No data from MC? Limiting my analytic tools? 'The object'?

Nonsensical instructions?

No, this is real.

I guess that's why they were scared of data.

They don't want me to learn about a part of reality that the general public had no idea about.

And I guess I'll never know what it is either.

I'll just blow up 'the object' and that'll be the end of it.

No one will ever explain what was it all about and I'll have just a dream-like fleeting memory of a really weird forest.

I was not feeling what it was hope. That was simply a likely outcome.

Ah well.

One hour.

Two hours.

Three hours.

Nothing changed, just I became slightly uncomfortable with seeing the same repeating pattern of the identical trees.

It's supposed to be 900 metres to 'the object' yet it's been three hours and I'm not there yet?

My sense of time seemed to be unaltered, so that's what I decided to go with.

Three hours.

Three hours, thirty-three minutes...

And then a clearing in the woods.

A meadow of tall brown autumn grass and 'the object' in the dead centre of it.

The clearing was like a line in the forest, and 'the object' was like a belt buckle on it.

I couldn't see if the clearing had an end to the west (?) and east (?) from 'the object'. The line was as long as I could see.

My artificial eye laser-measured the distance.

328 metres.

No potential hostiles were present or visible.

There were no birds or any other non-plant forms of life.

317 metres.

I adjusted Model 8884 so I could raise it to aim it.

It probably will have a bitch of recoil, won't it?

It should...

302 metres.

301.

300.

I was made to be precise.

Okay, something was weird.

There was like a barely visible halo around 'the object'.

And the trees in the background of 'the object' seemed distorted, like the air was heated... No, like it was bent.

Yet I could sense no heat or radiation, or... Anything.

Even 'the fracturing' of my body did not change its rate.

Just like in the visual, the weird metal building or device a. k. a. 'the object' had paint work on it that simply said "SUNTG-14".

Which meant absolutely nothing to me.

Alright, let's get this done.

I pulled the trigger after aiming right at the mathematical middle of the object's rectangular side that was facing me.

*CLANG*

A loud metallic sound echoed in the forest.

A cartridge fell off the back of the Model 8884.

Minor recoil.

Huh.

*TSSSSS*

The rifle (?) hissed.

I don't think 'it worked'.

Alright.

33 metres forward.

*CLANG*

*TSSSSS*

33 metres forward.

*CLANG*

*TSSSSS*

33 metres forward.

The world tilted.

The meadow went vertical and I started falling towards 'the object'.

My mind spasmed with all sorts of warnings from the processor.

One warning was measuring the distance to the end of the fall.

It was increasing.

Metres.

Kilometres.

Megametres.

Gigametres.

...

Fuck.

I was falling towards 'the object' but it wasn't getting closer despite the vertical wall of the meadow flying by... Fast.

Distance made no sense and I was somewhat glad most analytics were off.

I aimed Model 8884 down.

*CLANG*

*TSSSSS*

*CLANG*

*TSSSSS*

*CLANG*

*TSSSSS*

*CLANG*

*TSSSSS*

*CLANG*

*TSSSSS*

"DIE! DIE! DIE!"

This was so much for my brain remnant that the primal emotions bubbled to the surface of the emotionlessness ocean my mind was submerged in.

Anger and fear.

Yet Model 8884 didn't change anything.

*CLANG*

*TSSSSS*

*CLANG*

*TSSSSS*

*CLANG*

*TSSSSS*

*CLANG*

*TSSSSS*

*CLANG*

*TSSSSS*

I kept pulling the trigger, a good dozen of empty cartridges were now orbiting me.

I started losing focus.

My biological eye teared up.

Then 'the object' expanded in my view all of a sudden.

And I've crashed into it.

*DAMAGE WARNING*

*ENGAGING SHOCK PROCEDURES*

And I've shut down...

<...>

<...>

<...>

*REBOOTING*

I slowly opened one of my eyes. Prosthetic eye wasn't online so I've been on like 30% of my usual vision.

I looked around, I was dazed.

Otherwise, I'd be running for the nearest cover, as I'd usually do in a new situation.

For a moment I thought I was still on the grass of the clearing around SUNTG-14.

I was not.

This grass field was as vast as I could see in all directions.

*OH, FUCK*

I returned to my senses, stood up, and scanned the location once more.

Fuck.

No cover.

I kneeled down immediately, standing up was making myself too much of a target in such an open space.

My gun. The useless Model 8884... It was a dozen metres away.

On a grassless spot in the meadow.

It looked like a patch of fresh asphalt road, a spot of black surface...

There were more of these spots all around me.

I carefully moved towards 8884, trying to remain low to the ground.

I touched the black surface.

It resembled plastic.

Seems safe to walk on...

5 metres to 8884...

4 metres to 8884...

3 metres...

"Do not. You will not hurt us. You cannot~"

A voice coming from all directions hit my senses.

A feminine, high pitched voice, too high... If I had my old ears or brain I would have been irritated.

"She" finished with a laugh.

I tried to dash towards 8884...

But I *slipped* and fell.

The black surface started... Melting?

I peeled my body off the "tar", stood up, and quickly sunk to my knees.

I stopped moving trying to maintain balance and not fall down into the tar, which felt like it would be the end of me.

I couldn't reach 8884 from this position, not that it mattered, that heavy thing would be no help in this situation.

Unlike me, it stayed on the surface, so close, yet...

"What do you want?"

Voice again.

I didn't want to fucking drown in this shit.

'Tar' was now above my knees.

"Let me help you."

And I felt something touch me.

Hands grabbed my sides and I stopped descending.

I smacked my head, unjammed lids on my prosthetic eye, dropped them, and activated rearview cameras.

I was being held by a... Statue? Being?

Something resembling a woman, a figure made of the same material I was trapped in.

The! POTENTIAL HOSTILE! moved.

Stared right into my metal neck... Right to where the rearview cameras were.

Smiled with a black shiny tar face.

I screamed.

It had my face.

It had my face.

It had my face.

It had my face.

It had my fa-

*ADMINISTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK INHIBITORS*

Not the "face" I had now, not the emotionless feminine face mask of generic cold beauty I was 'gifted' by that pervert head of MC...

Not scarred skin patch around my eye surrounded by armour mesh under the mask...

My *old* face-

*ADMINISTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK INHIBITORS*

Or... A better version?

Was I this... Calculably attractive? Not like I could judge attractiveness just by feel.

Symmetrical face, big eyes, louche curves...

! POTENTIAL HOSTILE!

Another being emerged in front of me.

Another dark and glossy reverse caricature of my past body.

"You do not lie here. This is you..."

Soon there were like five of them.

"You will have to talk."

"War will accomplish void here~"

Laugh again.

I quickly wrote a code in the control script - not advised - and ran it.

It disabled most of my technological functions, redirected most of the total available processing power to analyze the situation...

I got garbage data.

Nonsense numbers.

Non-Euclidian maps.

3.333333...

I couldn't tell where the voice was coming from, what was the black material, what were! POTENTIAL HOSTILES!...

"Talk!"

The Voice seemed pleasantly... Irritated?

! POTENTIAL HOSTILE! right in front of me ran a finger across my torso, which made my tactical processor FREAK THE FUCK OUT...

It proceeded to touch a blank spot of armour mesh between my legs, leaving traces of 'the darkness' on the mesh.

"You must want this?"

"You can say 'no', you know that?"

I've adjusted the script again.

Dug through the archive of many iterations of the control script.

I wasn't supposed to tamper with it, but I was given access because of my status in the cooperative.

There... Broken linkage to the negotiation block of the tactical processor. I... Must have disabled it at some point?

I rarely needed to negotiate with my targets...

*LINKAGE RESTORED*

"State your designation."

I said.

"Are you asking about me? But I cannot play like this~"

"First you must tell about yourself, only then I will be able to share truths of my own."

Negotiation block didn't like this one bit...

"I am human."

Necessary statement in today's world.

And almost a complete lie.

I wasn't a human biologically or legally or...

"Are you?"

The touchy! POTENTIAL HOSTILE! touched my neck.

"Could you describe the situation for me?"

I asked.

The touchy! POTENTIAL HOSTILE! slid down to my crotch and dragged its tongue across it.

Odd.

"Stop."

"You say words but do not feel them. Are you ill, human?"

"I require assistance. Please."

Negotiation block begrudgingly let me add the last word.

As the odds were starting to look terrible even on the negotiation front, it was now even considering begging.

"Do you?"

Fuck it.

My hands were free.

Lightning-fast vacuum/hydraulic assisted punch hit the touchy one.

Its head exploded and I was sprayed by its gooey remains.

The Voice giggled.

"You appear to hate yourself."

"Do you not appreciate your forms?"

The touchy one's head reformed mere moments later as I pulled my fist back.

For a moment it was just a blob, then it shaped back into *my face* still smiling.

Stars damn it.

Something about seeing myself-but-not-myself triggered leftovers of my old pattern recognition.

Uncanny valley? More like fuck-no valley.

*It* checked her regenerated head with a pleasantly surprised expression, which soon changed back into a familiar smile.

Then it grabbed my waist.

The! POTENTIAL HOSTILE! behind me licked my neck, reducing rearview camera visibility by 89%.

Well, whatever... Within 0.001 seconds I calculated a flurry of blows to obliterate all! POTENTIAL HOSTILES! I had sufficient proximity with...

"I do not think you want to play like that."

Said the Voice with hints of amusement.

! POTENTIAL HOSTILE! that was holding me, released its hold and I instantly lost a centimetre to 'the darkness'.

Tactical processor's various blocks - and especially negotiation block - joined forces to cancel the burst faster than I could agree with the decision.

The! POTENTIAL HOSTILE! hugged me from behind and I stopped sinking again.

It did not make an attempt to pull me out however, the negotiation block had noticed.

"Can you see me?"

"We can say that I can."

Well, it's an answer.

"What is happening to me?"

"You is happening to you, gorgeous."

"No need to be so cold. Enjoy it."

Tsk...

"Do you control these... Constructs?"

"Do not insult yourself like that. But to make a useful answer... No. I do not."

"I am merely... Observing."

"I merely... Wakened them upon your arrival."

"Can you make them asleep again?"

"Once again, WORTHLESS WASTE, I do not control them."

The Voice suddenly turned incredibly, overwhelmingly hostile.

"Sorry about that~"

"I do not like repeating myself- Repeating myself- Re-"

And silence.

The! POTENTIAL HOSTILES! gathered closer around me, each finding a new activity, all belonging to a category of sexual harassment / assault.

Now, since I was barely biological, I didn't feel much about this, I just disliked a lack of useful data and options.

I didn't know what *they* were, why they were doing *this*, and how to even get out of this situation.

Perhaps they would grow bored of this and leave me alone.

They should understand that I am... Not suitable. If they even had any capability to process data.

I have never been in such a situation before.

Even with the creepy artwork-of-a-mask which was the only signifier of my gender, I was sexually unappealing to the vast majority of...

Well, everyone, I suppose.

To my knowledge, at least. Again, I could hardly judge these things...

"Stop."

I repeated.

But the star damned *things* didn't react in any way.

"Please."

Negotiation block really hated this word.

I believed that in this situation it's what I should have said though.

"You are not a bad person."

"If asked to stop, you would stop."

"But in this shape, you do not comprehend words. Only actions, only emotions."

The Voice explained.

"Why do you not feel?"

"Terror. Discomfort. Pain. Repulsion."

"Or pleasure, perhaps?"

"You would respond to these emotions. If you truly wanted... Anything."

"But you do not want anything."

"I would say you are dead in that regard. Or not a human."

"You did not lie, did you?"

"No, I am human."

"But I cannot express emotions properly."

"Is that so?"

"You will have to... If you are human."

"Please... Help me."

"Only you can help yourself here."

"I sincerely hope you have the capacity for that."

! HOSTILES! started to be... Rough.

They scrapped against the metal of my body.

Tore my mask off, revealing what most would consider repulsive, yet no better than what was covering it.

I was almost entirely covered by 'the darkness' at this point from their mouths and their hands.

They groped me between legs seemingly getting more desperate.

Smiles disappeared.

Fingers extended into sharp claws.

Screams did not escape me, despite both my technological and biological brains being in extreme distress.

The claws knifed across my armour.

Damage was minimal.

Damage... Turned into less minimal.

And I was rapidly sinking now.

This meant war and I blew them up with my strikes, only for them to come back.

And now there were more of them...

I was almost entirely submerged in 'the darkness' now.

I was still receiving damage reports, however...

They tore at my crotch.

To my shock, they have cut through through the armour mesh there.

Significant damage report.

Loss of vision.

Loss of hearing.

Loss of...

<...>

<...>

<...>

*REBOOTING*

I woke up.

I was sitting on my knees on a chilly hard surface.

There wasn't much light.

Wasn't much of anything.

Just a dim surface extending all directions, barely illuminated by sourceless light.

I was covered in 'the darkness'. Was sitting in the puddle of it.

I checked past damage reports.

I checked my body.

Claw marks...

And between my legs...

Armour mesh was missing there.

Actually, I've noticed multiple components missing from that area of my body.

I didn't have much biological material below my waist, just some low-significance elements.

I think I had micro accumulators there, but they were spread all across my torso, so whatever.

Not a big loss.

However...

I twitched from my metal fingers colliding with something... Down there.

Sensitive?

There was the inescapable dark matter, that at this point I think can only be compared to a nanomachine tissue, considering its properties.

In a shape, of, well, a vagina.

And sensitive.

Mildly intriguing.

I didn't care to check if there was an opening...

I looked up.

How did I get here?

I looked left.

I looked right-

8884!

Lying there, on the "floor".

Roughly at the same distance as it was before I 'sank into darkness'.

I *disliked* having zero useful data.

My sensors weren't working as well as before.

I've lost some of muscle through damage, sensors needed serious clean-up, my feet lacked grip as they were "wet" with the nanomachines in liquid state - possibly?

In short, I was functioning at only 90% capacity.

That's compared to before I ended up here, I was already crippled by the disabling of advanced analysis tools.

This was closest to us, killtech monsters, having a sensation infamously known as pain.

I stood up.

And noticed what my weakened senses missed.

A glass box I was in.

Why...

I punched it.

Huh.

No effect.

It must be a pretty thick sheet of glass.

Impact potential: 5% > 10%

I hit it again.

No effect.

Impact potential: 10%

Impact potential: 20%

Impact potential: 30%

Impact potential: 40%

...

Impact potential: 80%

The wall turned into a web of cracks.

Finally.

80% > 85%

Now there was a jagged hole in "glass", just enough to squeeze through.

I looked at my fist.

A thin needle of this glass-like material was poking out of it.

Ah...

I unmuted medium-to-low significance damage reports and found one about it.

It went pretty deep into the metal.

Ugh.

I pulled the shard out and got through the hole.

The jagged edges left some new marks on my already scratched mesh.

5 meters to 8884...

4 meters to 8884...

3 meters...

Another wall.

85% > 86%

No effect.

I'm in a slightly larger box with slightly stronger walls...

Is this a test of some sort?

I did fail the negotiation part of it...

Now 'they' are testing my physical and/or logical capabilities?

Is it a puzzle maybe? Maybe I'll pass through the 'glass' if I'll walk backwards through it?

I entertained the idea for 0.1 seconds...

Then what's with sexual harassment against an - extremely lethal - piece of furniture that I am sexually and emotionally?

"No data, no fucking data..."

I mumbled.

Thing is, I couldn't just go above 88%... Even 87% would be tough to execute.

And what if I needed even more?

That would be a waste of fuel...

I could perform extreme physical/destructive tasks but only about 12 times, an equal amount to the 'compensation capsules' I had.

The capsules were, well, a strategic secret. Even if I knew what it was, Allward's conditioning would not let me *know* know it.

Considering [ NO DATA ] I wanted to save them.

Tactical processor was quiet about this.

"No. Fucking. Lunar. Stellar. Cloneshit. Data."

...

"There you are!"

The Voice. Audio anomaly #1.

I turned down the negotiation block by editing the script. It was getting in the way at this point.

I'll have to wrack my remnant brain for some traces of human communication skills from my past life, I guess.

"What are you? Where am I? Can you give me anything, any data at all?"

"Mmmm... Well, gorgeous, I can hardly answer the second question without answering the first."

"The first one, however... That'll cost you."

"What's the price?"

"I want to know your name."

Okay...

In a nonsense land do as anomalies do, I suppose?

"CEAC#53-"

"No. This will not do."

"I know when you lie. I can see your mind as clearly as you can see your extended arm."

Please. No.

Not that.

My eye twitched. My remnant brain... I turned my head in discomfort.

It's like there was an insect, a parasite in my *brain*.

And it *moved*.

"It is my legal name."

I tried.

"Say it."

AA#1 was not having it.

"S..."

"Yes?"

"..."

"Sophia. Sophia Saber."

It was weird to say it. This name was purged from legal databases and no one has said it since in my presence.

The last time I heard it was when my little sister was screaming my name when... Before...

Before I died.

Interesting.

I didn't know I still had that memory. The tiny creature living in folds of my grey matter started wriggling its spiky legs...

*ADMINISTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK INHIBITORS*

*ADMINISTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK INHIBITORS*

*ADMINISTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK INHIBITORS*

*ADMINISTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK INHIBITORS*

*ADMINISTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK INHIBITORS*

"Are. You. S-satisfied now..."

I've pushed words out after an uncertain amount of time.

This amount of psychoactive elements in my remnant brain reduced my capacity by another 4%.

Coherence with my killtech is *not great* with my half-brain half-comatose...

"Incredible. It's like witnessing the birth of a star. There was a word for momentary stars..."

"For the ones that appear and disappear within seconds."

"Pulsars? No... Temporals. Yes."

...

"You are a peculiar one."

"But unfortunately..."

Fuck.

"I need your *real* name."

Huh?

My eye twitched again.

"Wh- Uh... It is my real name."

"Why are you doing this to me? Is this a game to you?"

"Is-..."

"I'm... Losing capacity."

"Oh, it is interesting. You are *almost* angry."

Huh. AA#1 was right.

I mean, in theory, I had emotions. I had my mannerisms, a phantom personality somewhere in the remnant brain.

The machine has spread its roots there, to my maimed psyche, and began to coexist with what made me *me*.

I, a 1% human, merged seamlessly with less than 100% machine.

Was I a bridge between natural and artificial?

...

"Wake up, gorgeous~"

There... Deep, far, away, buried, hidden... A spark of true hate, not an imitated one, not based on fading memories of the old functions.

Not the one induced by aggression drugs when I needed to go *berserk* on some hopeless targets.

And behind the spark...

"Iris..."

"I was eight, maybe nine. My grandmother... She's... Her name was Iris."

"I really loved her, so much that I wanted to be her."

"I wanted to have her name."

"But I didn't want to make my mom upset that I didn't want the name she has given to me..."

"So I haven't said it to anyone, ever..."

"I... Forgot about it."

"Why... Why do I still remember it now?"

Words fell out of me. It's like a dam inside me broke down.

I sat down on the floor and laid my back on the wall of my prison.

"Was it really that hard? To say your name?"

"It was?"

"Perhaps you are human after all..."

"You knew?"

"Of course. But I was confused, I could see a lie, but I could not see the truth."

"You do not know who you are. Even I do not know."

"Who fucking cares what I am?"

"You should. Or you will be trapped here forever."

"Are you threatening me?"

"I do not make threats. I would have done it already if I wanted to do something to you~"

"So why..."

"The reason why you are stuck here is because you do not want to leave."

...

Want? What is it like... To want? I remember chasing my wants and needs in my past.

But why did I do it?

Is it not normal to simply function?

I needed more data.

"I paid... Your price."

"I have really gotten much more than I asked for..."

"Very well then, I will tell you... "

<...>

A shift in understanding...

Infinite limitedness...

Single-cell organisms, algae of sorts in size larger than galaxy clusters...

Macrobiology experiments...

Loss of Earth's northern hemisphere to a sphere of failing causality...

Inevitable loss of the entire planet...

Clandestine assembly of SUN, Special United Nations...

A countermeasure, topology generators...

A malfunction...

An infinitely limited bubble universe...

Twenty foresters trapped inside for eight million years...

Loving, warring, fucking, building, rotting, learning, suffering...

Going insane...

Hacking the generator...

Attaching a perceived psychological state of their minds to the update cycle of the bubble...

Me, a new person to fuck with and fuck...

<...>

I just sat there, listening to AA#1 eagerly tell an insane tale...

...

"... also that *thing* you brought here. I am not letting you have it."

"It can hurt us. It hurts us just by being here."

"We are lucky that you are keeping it away from yourself with your lack of desire..."

"My name is Gabriella, by the way."

"I will DESTROY you when I am bored of you."

"Until then, I will help you, my gorgeous star~"

The eye twitched.

My anger at this absurdity and lack of control...

I screamed.

The glass prison shattered.

"No! Not there, you must not..."

'Gabriella' shouted as I fell, 'her' voice becoming quiet with the 'distance' I must have had to 'her'...

I dropped into the puddle and just stayed in it, twitching, until I sensed symptoms of going into repair mode...

Too many falls..

<...>

<...>

<...>

*REBOOTING*

I got on my feet and looked at 8884 again staying at an annoying distance from me.

The ground here was lumpy, soggy, and bending under me.

The illumination was better here, I was at the bottom of a large pit.

I tried to reach for the anger but it has retreated into the distant corners of my maimed mind.

If I wanted to get angry and progress, it won't be easy...

"Hello."

Audio anomaly #2.

Dull, soft, even voice.

A positive change from AA#1's voice.

"Right... You are one of the 'foresters'?"

"I am Noelle. Welcome to my place."

"You are mine now."

I got a semblance of fear.

There was no triumph or negotiation in it.

'She' simply stated a fact that held no significance to her.

"There were no games for so long."

"Thomas has escaped and I became lonely without it."

"I am sorry to hear that?"

"You will replace it."

"I will toy with you."

...

"I need to hurt you."

"You are lacking and it displeases me. Empty. Ugly. You spread insignificance where you go."

"You make me lacking."

"There is nothing here with you around."

"But as disappointing as you are, at least you are new."

"I could hurt you."

I said.

"Interesting... But you do not believe it yourself. Most displeasing."

I looked at 8884.

I should probably try to work with the "data" 'Gabriella' provided me with.

I should try wanting more, I guess.

Do I even want it?

Why? To complete the objective?

...

If 8884 is a weapon against this fever dream, perhaps this is what I was meant to do.

Get in this... State... And use the weapon.

Then maybe I could return to the reality I was familiar with.

But why?

Just because it's my routine after I've changed?

Complete objectives?

That would not change anything.

I simply *didn't care*...

"You will care."

*WOOSH*

The tactical processor reacted before I did.

I was holding... Something slimy, grey, and wriggly launched at me from the pit walls.

This 'setting' reminded me of something.

Tentacle? The old Soph-, I mean, *me*, would have scoffed.

Eight million years of free time to be creative and that's what 'she' went with it?

Of course 'toying' meant getting SA'd and not even in a very original way.

"Some concepts are primal. Foundational. Concentrated to perfection."

"Ah, so you're saying tentacles never got out of fashion for you?"

"But you agree with me? In part, this is your creation too."

I crushed the wriggling thing, it pulled back, regenerated to have a pointy end and lunged.

All within a fraction of a second.

I deflected a flurry of jabs with my elbows, then managed to snatch the tentacle again.

This time I pulled and ripped it out of the pit side, a couple of erratic spams and it kind of died in my grip.

I threw it away as it disintegrated into the familiar goo.

"Why do you resist? You claimed to not care."

I thought about it. Well, the tactical processor reacted to threats the way it was supposed to.

I maybe didn't care, but the processor and what was left of survival instinct did.

*Sophia*, though? I winced from the internal mention of that name.

I didn't want to... But I felt like I had to.

I dug into fragmented memories.

Old me would probably be disappointed, and scared... And partially... Intrigued?

Pride. There was some what they call pride in there.

Oh, no, *Sophia* was better than those pathetic heroines designed to lose in mere seconds so the *raping* could begin.

If *Sophia* was gonna be a part of a plot as old as time, she's gonna war like Mars.

The parasite reminded me of itself.

No, I was not allowed to remember.

That manifestation of trauma, a designer centipede of suffering would feast on these memories and claw into me.

And it did.

It wasn't even emotional or physical pain, just an overwhelming feeling of wrongness.

GUHh.

*ADMINISTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK INHIBITORS*

I've done this before, huh?

I thought about myself before.

But I learned, adapted, locked down *everything* about me so that I wouldn't go into this... Response.

"Fascinating."

'Noelle' reminded me about myself as I was dealing with all that.

"I will push you further."

Three tentacles.

I made an inhuman acrobatic masterpiece and ripped them to shreds.

War. I'm going to war.

I clung to this idea to the approval of the survival instinct/protocol.

Defence? No.

Offense.

I blurred to the pit wall and pierced into its predictably fleshy material.

My fingertips opened to deploy claws.

I didn't just fight humans: Those I could obliterate with projectile combat from a distance of at least a kilometre.

But there were bestial, even robotic threats with no detectable emissions in, for example, sewer systems with limited space and visibility.

Those I had to kill in melee while being constricted or chewed on.

Once I burst from an urban legend of a crocodilian being's stomach, after being-

Right. Enough of flashbacks...

The point is, that claws were effective in these kinds of scenarios.

The flesh wall exploded as I sliced a three-metre wide and deep crater into it.

"Why? It is not alive. It is a manifestation of our both psyches?"

"War."

I cried out an answer as the 9th of the 3rd generation of tentacles shot through my side.

I pulled it out with an end to my manoeuvre that eliminated the 3rd generation.

Internal sealant closed the hole my first mistake left.

With a hiss, my arms shifted like a Rubik's Cube and I began draining internal ammo banks.

The assault came and was met with 360° fiery destruction.

I chose to load the ammo with a hyper-flammable solution.

Forester's grey domain lit up with reds and yellows as 4th generation was ended.

When ammo banks were vacated, I extended my arms to the sides as far as I could to increase the radius of the field and emptied an entire block of batteries to generate lightning arcs, which fried most of the generation 5.

My legs and sides opened to dispense two 1.5-metre-long hypersonic blades to turn me into a vortex of violence.

Once they went blunt, another pair was dispensed... And another... And another... And-

So what if it was a manifestation or whatever.

I rarely needed to exhaust my arsenal like this.

And it was... Satisfying?

If it was on her screen, old Sophia would have made excited claps and yelled "Whooooooooooooooo!"...

She would have liked this display power... She would love to wield it herself.

Generation 7.

Generation 8.

Generation 9.

...

Generation 33.

I was on my knees resting my weight on my last blade, well, half of it.

Razor shards ringed me, marking a zone of death I maintained for stars know how long...

I *sizzled* as the goo of decaying flesh pit material boiled on my overheated armour.

Ventilators *roared* as vents opened on my back to get rid of the excess heat.

I had no idea I had these parts and systems...

Damage reports now were occupying terabytes of space in my memory.

Episode 3 entered a dramatic moment and a still-alive Sophia was on the edge of her seat.

She thought it was *awesome*.

I felt... A fraction of that satisfaction.

I felt...

I... Felt?

A tectonic shift happened inside me. I had... This? Locked down under an excuse of losing 70% of 'the thinking organ'?

I looked at my battered palms, fingers.

I've lost a few of those...

There was colour now. 'Murdered' tentacles at some point stopped bleeding black and started bleeding red.

So my hands seemed bloody.

...

Discomfort.

1% of my feelings have awakened and already they were reducing my efficiency.

"That was incredible. Thomas was not capable of that. I am grateful."

"I am satisfied, I'll allow you to leave if you wish. Do you?"

I didn't care. Well, maybe a bit. Maybe that was enough for me to get to 8884?

If I decided to...

I didn't see it anywhere though...

Discomfort.

I looked at my legs, broken in at least 4 places, by now almost stitched back together by smart fibre and sealant.

It's not as good as having undamaged limbs, but I could still outrun an Olympic runner.

I was at 40% of my original power.

My gaze stopped between my legs, lower stomach...

The region of my body that I believe was ripped out and replaced by the dark matter somehow.

Mildly intriguing.

I stuck my finger into the vagina carved into it.

My eye twitched.

I took my hand away instantly.

I *experienced* *something* when the finger went inside.

Okay, first of all: That half of my body was *badly* damaged and mechanics got rid of it.

Allward Coop. wanted me to kill, not reproduce - unlike some other of their 'patients', I could add.

They replaced it with artificial muscle fibre, filling medium, micro accumulators, etc.

Then it was forcibly clawed out by! HOSTILES! and replaced again, this time with that dark matter. Possibly.

...

How? Did the beings that once were human, during eight million years in the bubble universe decide to, from nothing, invent advanced biological engineering?

And do this to me? Join the new nerves to the old ones? During the time I was unconscious?

Was that some sort of sick joke? Was 'Gabriella' to blame?

Or the absurd nature of this place?

This was more mad than anything else I experienced.

...

I was never going to be a 'real girl'.

It's not reversible.

Not for me, at least... I mean, who'd pay a billion NU$ to fix *me*?

But now a part of me was back.

Could...

Was it possible...

Maybe...

If I begged...

If I sold myself...

Maybe...

Maybe the rest could come back too???

*ADMINISTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK INHIBITORS*

*ADMINISTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK INHIBITORS*

*ADMINISTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK INHIBITORS*

*ADMINISTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK INHIBITORS*

*ADMINISTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK INHIBITORS*

*ADMINISTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK INHIBITORS*

*ADMINISTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK INHIBITORS*

*ADMINISTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK INHIBITORS*

...

Hope. Terror. Disbelief.

Shock.

I was shaking, the distressed remnant was somehow loading biological data *into the killtech*.

Damage reports started throwing error code 333 for 'failure to identify'.

Calmness washed over me as both brains decided to, fuck it, suppress ALL of this.

Can't let Allward's equipment just blow up because it thought it has a pussy now, I guess...

Ah well.

I didn't... Care.

More. Than. Ever.

<...>

<...>

<...>

*REBOOTING*

"You are back."

I heard 'Noelle'.

I had cooled down.

My limbs had returned to 80% of their original capacity.

Good.

Now what?

The centipede in my brain wasn't crawling around, but I could feel it, fat bastard.

I grabbed my eyelid and tried to keep it from twitching as it was reducing my efficiency.

...

But I couldn't forget anymore.

I didn't have them as of then, but I needed to have feelings again.

"Noelle..."

"Yes?"

"Fuck me."

Every time I was pushed to the extreme, I discovered fragments of my former self.

So... Maybe... If I surrendered to this 'Noelle'...

Maybe I could awaken once more.

Sophia, that pervert, would be happy with this development.

Episode 4 was *hot*, she'd probably say after.

But... This was not on screen. This was *real*. This fever dream...

It was taking place in reality, even if just in primitive, timeless, one born of malfunction.

If I would get what I asked, I would experience *it* just like I would experience *it* in the reality I was used to.

Did I want to?

...

Yes.

I wanted to want. Even if it meant I would want 'Noelle' to *stop*.

...

"You are not immensely different from me."

Said Noelle.

"I am just older. I have been through many cycles of heal-to-break break-to-heal."

"It would be like fucking my younger self."

"Mm..."

"I will maim you."

'Her' usually featureless voice started to *slide* across 'her' throat or the equivalent of.

I slapped away a tentacle and sliced it into three pieces.

"C'mon, my arsenal is empty, but it'll be harder than this to take me..."

"I do not need to defeat you. You have chosen defeat."

"You will make it real."

"But you will assist?"

"Oh, yes... We both want it. A little bit."

It didn't sound like 'she' wanted it just 'a little bit'...

The tactical processor tried to process what was happening and even without the help of a negotiating block, it deduced that I was going against Allward's directives.

It will *resist* against my own will, as fickle as it was...

I opened the control script.

*ADMINISTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK INHIBITORS*

I was not in shock.

But the killtech was going to try to stop me from what I was about to do.

No, no, I couldn't *uninstall* the processor...

But maybe I could turn off one *small* feature.

It will reduce my efficiency by quite a bit, but I just happen to have the required level of access I was granted for being a 'good girl'.

*ADMINISTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK INHIBITORS*

Just... Need... To... Push... Through... The... Inhibitor... Fog...

*ADMINISTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK INHIBITORS*

I musthhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-

*ADMINISTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK INHIBITORS*

-access4exec: go psy/inhib/regulategroup8

-access4exec: rm

This time my *prosthetic* eye twitched.

I can't tell for sure, but I think I was in a half-asleep state, as the dose of inhibitors was almost enough to shut the remnant brain down completely.

Through a mist, I saw my tactical processor battle 'Noelle'.

There was no ruthlessness to it, just a calculated - elegant in its practicality - kill dance through a forest of tentacles...

<...>

"Where is your desire? It is gone."

I gradually returned to consciousness as the fog retreated...

I was knee-deep in red liquid from 'her' appendages I must have ripped up.

"Um, couldn't you just... Taken me? You rule this reality... And almost half of me was drugged to near-coma."

"I always could have had."

"But..."

Do I hear... Embarrassment in 'her' voice?

Mildly... Amusing.

"It is not fun to rape you if you do not want it..."

"Does that even make any sense- Ah whatever..."

I and killtech weren't given any time.

The pit walls simply *closed* around me.

When it opened I was in a small flesh cave, arms and legs restricted completely by tentacles.

Now the tactical processor had two options:

1] Do nothing.

2] Self-destruct to harm the enemy one last time.

All 12 'compensation capsules' going nuke mode at once?

The released force could level a smaller city.

And it would have cost Allward Coop. a couple trillion nu-dollars. No, not in damages, they would get out of that one, somehow.

A 'police excuse' would do the trick, it always does...

No, these capsules are just bloody expensive. Not supposed to be used, ever.

There weren't many of them in the world either, they were rotated by CEACs depending on the mission.

Wait, they gave me 12 for this one???

I haven't paid attention to that fact until now.

Oh stars, what have I been forced into?

...

Here the brain remnant was useful and suggested to the processor that it was better to live than to die.

And besides, despite facing overwhelming potential force from 100%! HOSTILE! and having no offence or defence to resist it, it doesn't mean the end.

Oh, so that's what is hope!

Intriguing.

...

A figure formed out of the red material into an avatar of 'Noelle'.

Not tall... Elegant... With a perfect black dress, pale skin, dark red hair.

Empty eyes.

Thin arms.

'The avatar' flowed closer to me.

'She' was holding 8884 like it was a feather. 'She' put the end of the rifle under my chin and said:

"Click."

And laughed.

...

'She' threw 8884 away.

"Strange to see you with my own eyes."

"You are just a broken thing, are you not?"

"Just... Like me."

'She' lowered herself and looked at my crotch.

"Mmm..."

'Her' tentacles wriggled spreading my legs.

Even with my emotions locked up again, I was *mildly intrigued* by how it might feel.

And what my messed up body will do about it...

'Her' appendages travelled further up my limbs spiralling around them, and the tactical processor prepared 6 out of 12 capsules.

Just in case, it assured the remnant brain.

'Noelle' was now within arm's reach.

I was... Disgusting. I knew that.

A few times my mask wasn't covering my face and I was met with reactions of aversion from those that saw me like that.

Well, once there was this weird person... Oh, whatever.

I could just *taste* an awful mixture of bleakest emotions in my mouth...

Animalistic desire, self-hatred, absolute embarrassment, a terror that 'she' will reject me after all, a terror of what's to come if 'she' didn't...

If these emotions took control, I would be ripping myself apart, literally, that's how much I *loathed* myself and this "body".

The centipede bit me...

Her gentle, thin hands touched my "face". 8 out of 12...

"You do not want it."

"You never did."

"You never will."

She ripped off the front of my head.

*DAMAGE REPORT*

12 out of 12.

<...>

<...>

<...>

Uh, rebooting?

I was in some space, floating weightless.

I knew somehow that I was bodiless.

There were two horizons...

One of absolute darkness, capable of consuming any light, no matter how intense.

The other was less empty... The way to it was blocked by shining walls.

A hundred... Or more.

Barriers...

"Come back to me. I am lonely."

"Do not leave me."

'Her' voice. No longer directionless, it was echoing from beyond the barriers.

...

*INITIATING ANNIHILATION PROTOCOL*

"Stop it."

Demanded 'Noelle'.

I focused.

*ACCESS LEVEL FOUR IS INSUFFICIENT FOR THIS OPERATION*

Well, I guess that is it. I stared into the lightless horizon...

It represented the end. No more feeling. No more unfeeling.

No more discomfort, forever.

The horizon beyond the barriers represented the beginning of everything.

Pain. Joy. Hatred. Fear. Lust. Rise and fall, war and peace...

The entire universe was out there.

A promise of happiness.

A warning of misery.

...

I never sought inexistence.

I simply did not care whether I was alive or dead.

Both were nothingness.

In theory, I knew that being alive was somewhat better than being dead.

Death... After that, there were no more chances of change...

But even if I lived, some sort of significant change was incredibly unlikely.

I simply lived following orders I didn't care enough to disobey.

Survived two hundred years, survival instinct/protocol can be proud...

But it'll end here.

Ah well.

"This world you created... You have a choice here."

"Choose nothingness... Or choose suffering and euphoria."

"Time is slow here but you only have 0.00003 of a second before fire within you will be freed and cause me great pain."

I had a choice?

Is this another manifestation? Could I defy my programming and override the tactical processor in this representation of my pre-death psyche?

I peeled my gaze from the horizon of nothingness and looked at the barriers.

I needed to cross them.

I needed to awaken my remnant brain, unearth buried memories, unleash stifled emotions...

Reassemble my humanity.

And then load it into the processor in a supposedly impossible action, yet one I experienced.

Turn a one-way connection to the processor in the other direction.

Take control of the processor that was meant to control me.

Well, I didn't need *need* to...

I could just do nothing until the capsules were unleashed.

Or I could go into the nothingness and be swallowed by it.

...

I've built barriers within myself to survive the atrocity that was done to me.

And what happened after...

Crossing them would be a pure torment.

Each will be worse than the previous one... And there are so many.

Beyond it awaits... What? The twisted prison of the 'bubble universe' and an awful company of the 'foresters'?

An eternal slavery to an organization manufacturing and enabling cruelty?

Perhaps just instant deterioration into insanity the moment I can truly experience the misery I live.

...

Life.

That's what is out there.

All the colours.

I heard someone crying.

Oh... It was me.

It will hurt. So much, so much... But I will do it.

Every. Single. Barrier.

The kindness of nonexistence. I'll turn away from it.

Because it is not for me.

Because I am Iris.

I have to be.

<...>

I reached out for the first barrier.

Everything in me screamed silently in terror of what was to come.

"It's okay, it's okay, Iris, everything will be okay."

"It's okay, it's going to be okay..."

I hugged myself.

And stepped forward.

[ BARRIER 01 ]

It was raining and I was slowly walking through an unlit passage between massive industrial buildings.

The cruel red line of my laser sight cut through the dimness, thuds of my heavy footsteps were masked by the white noise of the dirty, polluted rain.

I was more emotionless than ever, the lack of tension gave me a sort of phantom satisfaction.

I knew exactly where the target was. It won't escape.

I approached the memorium where the target was located.

A journalist? A rebel? A "terrorist"?

Something like that.

It, the target, has gotten way too close to something big.

A gone person recorded in the databases of the dead in this abandoned memorium, their mere name and expiry data could change this wretched planet.

However, on this planet, the change was... Undesirable by some.

I tossed the rifle to the ground and placed my palm on the gigantic gate.

I sent a surge of electricity through it, then with both of my arms forced the gate open.

*DAMAGE REPORT*

I tore my muscles a little.

Ah well.

I stepped into the long unused visitor room.

Raised the rifle and the moment the red line met the target's head I pulled the trigger.

Okay, step two, inject the cleanup virus into the memorium's systems.

I kicked the target's corpse away from the terminal it was using.

It didn't stop working the terminal even when I disabled the gate, which was pretty noisy actually.

It must have known that it was dead anyway, and it must have been important to make a few extra button presses.

Or so it thought... Allward's wire rats had already isolated the memorium from the rest of the Wired, and there was no way any bit of data was going to leave it.

I looked for a socket to plug in the medium that contained the virus.

My eyes glanced at a terminal screen.

USERNAME:

[ annasaber. unicentral. gov ]

PASSWORD:

[ ############## ]

INVALID PASSWORD

- You have 2 attempt(s) remaining -

[ LOGIN ]

I scratched my head. Something was wrong.

It was like something was inside my head.

Anna. Saber...

Oh.

I turned on a flashlight on the rifle, turned the corpse over and looked into the face.

My eye twitched.

I could recognize the features.

My... Sister. How long has it been? Thirty years?

She's... All grown up.

All dead.

Ah... Well.

[ END ]

I have a body now. An ephemeral, featureless humanoid one.

I was crying, crying so bad it seemed like with one of the cries I'd rip my throat apart.

I was in a fetal position quaking with grief.

I couldn't. I won't. I...

...

Shivering, I stood up.

"No, please, I don't want to!"

"No, no, no, no-"

And I stepped into the next barrier.

[ BARRIER 02 ]

A fragmented memory, foggy from both extreme denial and borderline lethal amounts of shock inhibitors in the biological system...

Too terrible to recall...

Yet I knew *exactly* what I did...

They were just children...

Innocent and victims way before I had to *erase* them...

Most of the missions I completed were ethically inexcusable...

But this, oh, this was *the worst*...

If I wasn't hiding something else in my mind...

Broken little bodies...

I should have killed myself instead of numbly following orders...

Not just here, but before as well...

I sh-

[ END ]

"Please make me not feel, I don't want to, please, please, please-"

"I don't deserve to die. I must suffer. I must suffer for all eternity-"

I *screamed*.

I clawed my face, I tried breaking my fingers, but I felt nothing with this body. I need to get my real one back.

The topology generator... I'll beg 'Noelle', I'll beg 'Gabriella', they will make a world of torment for me.

I could probably make one myself but I need them and their experience of eight million years to create something that would truly give me what I deserve.

I stood by the third barrier burning with the desire to maim myself, yet my psyche recoiled against my will from entering another torment.

If I ever escape I will probably go into a psychological shock whenever I see a white rectangle...

[ BARRIER 03 ]

His nasty grin.

I've forgotten about it.

Until now.

I don't know why he was trying to abuse me, since I felt barely anything and he couldn't hurt me or command me.

At the same time I couldn't do anything to him, just stand and let him do whatever he wanted with me.

I guess he was like a messed-up child torturing toy animals in the absence of real ones.

Once he brought an accumulator and ran electricity through me, but the damage was minimal.

Once he splashed me with acid when my mask was down. The biological eye I had wasn't even mine after that.

He got reprimanded for damaging the equipment, but that didn't stop him.

Once he started rubbing his penis on my leg while touching the only patch of skin I had. His cum stained me, he said various sexual insults to me after but I didn't remember them because I didn't care.

He'd always come up with something.

Besides new abuses, frequently he would read me reports of my nastiest missions, repeating over and over what a monster I was.

He was from marketing I think, so he felt morally superior or something.

Because he didn't need to stain his hands with blood.

He was *filth*.

I never *really* chose to inflict horror upon this world.

He did, even if his capabilities were much more limited...

One day, he happily strolled towards me and said:

"Have you heard?"

"Haha..."

"Adelaide got bombed."

"You're from Adelaide, right? Everyone you ever knew while you weren't an abomination is probably dead."

"Or heavily irradiated. And dying in terrible pain."

"I took the liberty to browse Saber family data, mm, yes, eight people with this surname indeed were living there."

"You know, until they burned up in the nuclear fire. It at least was a fast death."

He forcefully removed my mask and threw it away.

"But yeah, the suburbs a little further from the epicentre were *just* irradiated."

"Hopefully no one of yours lived there. But then your piss-for-genes family was probably too poor to live elsewhere."

"My condolences... Hope they've been on vacation though, haha."

He got closer and stared into my "face".

...

He was looking for twitches in my biological eye, somehow he learned that it was the only sign of distress I could and would show.

He *lived* to see that.

"Nothing? Aw, shame. You'd think that'd make even *you* feel something, you shit-fucking robot. You disgust me."

"Anyway, got to go. I'll keep you updated on the whole situation though. Maybe some survived."

He picked up my mask on his way out.

"Oh, what's this trash? Someone's littering, what a shame..."

He shoved it in the garbage chute, then left, probably feeling very satisfied with himself...

...

[ END ]

"Why... Why me?! What did I do?!"

"It's worthless, everything is worthless..."

...

"Iris, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay-"

"Just one more. We're almost halfway there, just one more..."

"We have to."

"Maybe we can kill him when I'm out. Maybe we could kill everyone."

I crawled towards the next barrier.

[ BARRIER 04 ]

"Anna, say 'Hi!' to your sister Sophia!"

"She's gonna live with us now."

The little girl was hiding behind our mother's legs and staring at me with distrust.

I was feeling awkward, I hadn't seen her since the divorce and she was just a toddler back then.

"Hello..."

I raised my hand in greeting.

"Hi..."

Anna replied just as shyly.

"She was living with dad, but dad's... Busy now, so we're gonna have Sophia all to ourselves."

Mom smiled.

"Yuuuup."

I confirmed.

A couple months passed. I was studying at the time and would only return home in the evenings.

I liked to play games and we had a console setup in the living room.

I think it was mom's old one, still *fun*ctional. Once I started living here, I cleaned it and even bought a few replacement parts from tech junkyard.

It was the third evening in a row of me trying to teach Anna how to play a racing game.

It was pretty easy, so she just needed a bit of practice.

At first, she was happy to try and got cheerful just being able to move her ship from side to side.

But today she was aware of the game enough to notice that she kept crashing into walls and failing the jumps.

She was comparing herself to me and became disappointed.

And frustrated.

"Hmm... Let me check your controller."

I said holding back a smile seeing the little girl pout.

"I don't want to play this stupid game anymore..."

I messed a bit in the options menu.

"Oh, I think your profile was set to hard difficulty, I also would crash on it."

"Really?"

"Yuuup. Here, try again."

I sat behind her and took my own controller. What Anna didn't know is that I had set her ship to be controlled with my controller...

And disconnected her controller completely.

I could see what controls she tried to use to stay on the track and I tried to imitate her to the best of my ability.

I'd still hit walls a bit 'cause playing like this was a bit more difficult, so I believed I was able to maintain the illusion.

"Wow!!!"

Anna was amazed at what was happening.

We have - I've taken care of the controls and she of the pure excitement, so we were a great team - completed the race and even got a bronze medal.

Anna immediately ran to the work room to brag about it to mom.

...

Later that evening I was reading a book on a sofa and Anna came to lie down next to me.

We both liked the sofa and sometimes even fought over who would get to extend across the entirety of it.

But mostly we'd share.

After a while of her resting there, Anna asked:

"You controlled my ship?"

Aw, busted... Hopefully, she won't get sad. Or mad at-

"Thanks."

She said quietly and hid her face in my sweater.

I was stunned.

I've put my hand over her to hug her.

...

[ END ]

"Anna! ANNA!!! Anna... No... NO!!!"

"I'll never forget you, I'll... I'll never..."

...

I don't know how long it has been until I got myself together enough to drag myself into another barrier...

[ BARRIER 05 ]

Corpses. So many corpses.

I was in [ classified ] [ data missing ]...

My objective here was to get to the patient zero and retrieve a sample.

I was in a vast hall. Its walls were spiked, the ceiling low, with a number of illumination elements that were clearly not enough to illuminate the whole hall.

In the centre of the hall, there was... A feeding trough I assumed.

About 3000 people have been kept here. Mostly southerners... A few of them were still alive.

I heard their weak wails.

This strain of the virus wasn't at 100% lethality, but not far off.

I don't think [ classified ] expected it to be this... Effective.

Ah well.

At the far end of the rectangular hall, there was a cell where patient zero was put, after being injected with the... Yeah...

I needed to extract some of the patient zero's blood and get back.

The corpses were so densely covering the floor, that I had no other options but to walk on them.

This awfulness - in addition to other less visible but not less nasty symptoms - would eat at the victim's eyes, so on the bodies they were turned completely brown and leaking tainted tears over the tortured faces.

My weight made my feet sink right into the dead flesh and it made a wet indescribably horrible sound.

...

[ END ]

I just cried now.

...

[ BARRIER 06 ]

[ BARRIER 07 ]

[ BARRIER 08 ]

[ BARRIER 09 ]

[ BARRIER 10 ]

[ BARRIER 12 ]

[ BARRIER 13 ]

<...>

[ BARRIER 333 ]

I cried. I laughed.

...

Insanity.

Pain.

Suffering.

Euphoria...

Intense desire to harm myself.

A Mandelbrot-like pattern of everything a human could ever feel, in all colours...

I fell through it.

...

...

...

...

...

...

Too many falls.

<...>

The space I was in now was colourless, lightless-yet-not-dark, directionless...

In 'front' of 'me' was a small box that could fit in my hand.

Wires were sticking out of it and disappearing in the vagueness...

I picked it up.

"You cannot control me. Not here."

"You cannot be a part of what I am."

"You are but a machine, a million times less complex than my biology, however limited it has become..."

"A marvel of morbid human ingenuity, yet primitive compared to me, a child of reality."

...

Lights out.

<...>

<...>

<...>

Waking up...

Iridescent liquid dripped from above leaving colorful stains on my body.

I was still suspended above the floor by familiar fleshy appendages.

The demon inside my skull was filling it entirely now.

A mess of prickly plates and legs, scratching against its bone cage.

I giggled.

"I thought I lost you..."

'Noelle'...

I didn't respond. I was... Devastated.

This emotion...

Was what a survivor of a disaster would feel standing on a destroyed shore, looking at the remains of their home of twenty years...

Calm, tired, exhausted capacity to feel emotions yet unexplainably satisfied a little. A quiet after the storm...

"You have changed..."

"Look what I have found under your fake faces."

'She' poked me on the - forehead? - with one of her digits and I saw myself through 'her' eyes.

Damaged limbs, lips of a black vagina, torso riddled with holes, half-sealed with intensively orange sealant...

Face.

My face...

Half of it was of that dark matter, but the other half was just like I remembered or dreamed about somewhere in my subconscious.

Almond-shaped large eyes, full lips, small nose, long eyelashes.

She/I blinked and it looked like a butterfly wing in motion.

Was I ever really that beautiful?

And hair! My shiny hair!

Tears...

I felt them on both sides of my face. I didn't... I didn't have a prosthetic eye anymore. It couldn't cry...

I was full of emotions, all of them, and they were taking 'my side'.

Hatred at those that made me lose what I now regained.

Fear of the idea that I might die when I finally had a reason to live.

Lust that disgusted me before, now blissful, as I imagined the pretty face expressing carnal pleasure.

Happiness...

...

Love.

I blinked.

I wasn't viewing myself anymore.

'The avatar' was nowhere to be seen.

Disappointment took over, is 'she' not going to-

Tentacles pierced my torso and limbs.

And the dark side of the face.

I was released and collapsed on the floor.

'The avatar' was behind me.

She hugged my torso.

The tentacles started ripping components/pieces of armour/filler material from me.

It *hurt*... Or something. The processor was quiet. The killtech was quiet.

Getting torn apart, even without pain, was not pleasant.

Moments later I resembled a carrion that was picked half to the bones.

'Noelle' laid me down on the floor and leaned over me.

Opened her mouth.

Darkness started dripping from 'her' on my damaged parts.

...

I don't know how much time has passed.

I blinked. 'Noelle', who was standing turned 'her' back to me, faced me.

Walked to me, and extended 'her' pale hand.

I took it and... Stood up.

My mind was short-circuiting with sensations.

I touched myself, everywhere. I could feel wet skin, bones under it, flesh...

Warm, soft flesh.

A drunk laughter escaped from me.

And a couple moans.

"Make me feel, Noelle. Please..."

A parasite was looking for a way out, my eye twitched.

I dragged my tongue across my finger, palm, wrists...

"Punish me. Pleasure me. Please..."

'The avatar' disappeared.

I was constrained again and lifted into the air.

A tentacle slid over my lower lips.

"Ahh~"

"Mm... Aaah~"

So... Sensitive.

Almost to the point of pain.

Pain...

Ah, fuck...

I am really going to *feel* it, aren't I?!

"Noelle, I don't-"

It went inside.

A little bit.

"GAH!"

It started going in and out maybe a centimetre at a time, not exactly getting *rammed* like Sophia liked before she changed...

Yet it was scary, a little painful, and absolutely overwhelming.

Then it got deeper.

"Owww! Sssssssssss-"

I drew air through my teeth reacting to pain.

...

Then it got deeper.

"Guhhhhhhh-"

Another tentacle got into my mouth. Slimy, fleshy, yucky-

Another went for my... Other hole? I didn't know I had that as well?

"Mmmm! Mm! Mhh! Mm! Mmmmmmmmm...-"

I moaned with my mouth full of *flesh* unable to make any other sounds.

Yes, it hurt, my ~holes~ were untouched, *unviolated*, oversensitive.

I'm gonna break! I'm gonna die!

Repeated inside my head...

"This is just a taste of what I am going to do to you."

Noelle!!! Please!!! Stop!!!

I knew she could read my mind, so it didn't matter if I was being throat-fucked or not, she could still 'hear' me.

I *want* to be *raped*...

Why?!

A tentacle wrapped around my neck.

Kill me!!! Yes~ Yes~ Yeeeeeeessssss~ Noelle!!! Noelle~ Noelleeeeeeeeee-

"I am not going to kill you."

Despite those words, her tentacles went deep... Er???

You can't!!!

"Oh, but I can~"

What???

I wanted to scream as more tentacles entered me, but I couldn't as I was full of them...

"MMMMMMMMMMMMMM- Mmmmm..."

I looked down. My stomach was moving, Noelle was caressing my intestines from the inside.

"Guhhhhh-"

This is mad. This is not possible. The sensations. Being filled...

"-hhhhhhhhhhhhh..."

My body arched on its own.

Cumming!

I stared up at the ceiling, at the roots of the tentacles that were pulsing inside my throat.

I pulled at tentacles that were wrapping around my arms and grabbed those ending in my throat.

"Hhh... Mmmm... Guhh..."

I started pulling them out. It was not easy without my artificial muscles, it took me a good minute of effort to do it.

Finally, my throat was free.

I looked at the damn things, covered in my saliva, struggling in my hand.

I licked my lips, shamelessly put my tongue out, and... Released them.

I convulsed as they reentered the moment they were free. And went even deeper than before.

"-mmmMMMMeeeeee!"

I pulled them out again... Released.

"Guh!"

I pulled out... Released.

I pulled out... Released.

I pulled out... Released.

...

Once I grew satisfied with this game, I pulled the tentacles one more time and instead of letting them go, I started licking the pointy tips.

"Ngh!"

Oh, she could make *sounds* too, huh?

Tentacles started spewing the dark matter at my face and chest.

I opened my mouth and started tasting and swallowing.

It was warm. It tasted... Oily. And rich. Organic and inorganic. Taste of nothing and everything...

The moment it was inside me, *hunger* awakened.

I stuffed my face with tentacles and drinked, drinked, drinked...

"The blood of the generator... The seed of the generator... Yes. Feast upon it, broken one. Sate yourself with pure creation...."

"Mmmmmmhh-"

I came again.

Once Noelle's *release* finished, I just stayed suspended by tentacles as I was continuously violated.

My mouth was free, I had it slightly open, tongue pathetically outside, drooling, as the tentacles in my lower orifices rocked me.

"Are you getting bored?"

"Noo-o-o-o-o-o-o-"

"I j-just..."

"So g-o-o-o-o-d, s-so badddddddd-"

"Aah! Oh..."

"I will *fix* you, broken one..."

I made a squeak as tentacles left my insides and wrapped around me, *squeezing*.

My full stomach couldn't take it and dark matter started spilling out of me.

After that, I yelped as my legs were lurched up.

As I was trying to get acclimated to being upside down, a rope of tentacles grew from the ceiling and dived towards my holes.

One slid inside my pussy, others went for the ass.

Once again Noelle was crawling in my intestines, but this time I felt one go further and further...

With a muffled scream and a burst of the 'generator seed' it exited from the other end.

"Hh! Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-"

I grabbed what was sprouting from my mouth with both hands and just *held it* with my eyes rolled up so much it hurt.

Everything hurt.

I felt dizzy, confused, shocked, ill... Ecstatic...

Please be real, please let this be real!

...

Half-consciously I heard Noelle giggling but it sounded like it was far, far away.

I was gone, lost in a labyrinth of maddening satisfaction...

Tentacles left my body in one rapid motion and I found myself orgasming again, overwhelming sensations shockwaving across my form.

I lifted my hand and stuffed it inside my pussy.

It was wet with the generator goo, my pussy's slime, and tentacle secretions.

"Dirty hole, mmm..."

I babbled with zero thoughts in my mind, just pure sensation, with my tongue half out.

And I was again filled all the way through with mind-breaking speed...

"Guhh!! Y-yyyyyiii-"

"Eeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaa-"

"Noelleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-"

"Yes! My name! Cry it!"

Knowing that these appendages were connected to her, this leftover of what was once a person, knowing that she *enjoyed* ravaging me...

Oh, that was disgustingly, delightfully *perfect* too.

"Take me! Consume me!!!"

I yelled out.

The tentacle in my pussy was stabbing my cervix repeatedly, I was jerking it with both of my hands.

Meanwhile, anal invaders were flowing in and out, blooming into demented bouquet at the end of their traversal, before momentarily retreating.

Noelle started pouring the seed at some point and copious amounts of that black oily substance leaked from all three of the holes, after my insides could no longer contain more of it...

It made a puddle under me, Noelle threw me into it, jammed one tentacle into my ass and several into my pussy.

I was lying in the puddle, one of the nostrils submerged making bubbles as I breathed out, my tongue by its own will moving in the substance, tasting it.

The tentacle in my ass went through my intestines, exited my mouth, wrapped around my neck a couple times and tightened up.

The ones in my reproductive hole were ruthlessly scraping against every square millimetre of it.

I came again and again, as the oxygen deprivation was killing my brain...

I rolled on my back while still being assaulted like this when two new tentacles squeezed their tips into my ears and filled them with the substance as well.

I was deafened to my own gurgling sounds.

Two more began squeezing my tits.

"Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes-"

Noelle echoed in my mind until we started cumming one last time...

...

Lights out...

<...>

<...>

<...>

I woke up from a need to puke.

I found myself on fours, vomiting the dark matter out of my body.

Several convulsions later I was gasping for air.

I spat a few times, clearing my mouth.

"Guh... Phew. Uh..."

I've changed to a sitting position.

I made a wild, eerie laugh, free of any restraints.

How the fuck I was alive? I understood by now that this place had its very own cloneshit rules, but still.

I looked around. I was still on the fleshy surface, but the pit had been replaced with a flatland of grey flesh.

The sky was filled with inconsistent clouds, so it wasn't entirely dim.

It was raining and some of the blackness on my body had vanished with it.

I laid on my back, letting the rain wash me more, I *wanted* to see my body completely bare.

Well, I could say it was my body, but it wasn't one I was born with.

It was made for me.

Yes, it was like my old body, painfully clear memories confirmed that, but it lacked the wear and tear of life.

No scars from injuries I collected in my unsafe job, no signs of malnutrition, I had a nice layer of fat beneath the skin.

Skin that at the end of my old life had been showing signs of a harsh lifestyle, was nice and healthy again, of a lovely wood-colour shade, shiny even in this illumination.

The hair! Oh, it was strong and... And... And-...

After a while, I walked to a puddle on the uneven ground and finished cleaning up.

As much as I could do that because I was still *leaking* what Noelle filled me with.

I wasn't hurting despite the ways she used me. Strange.

I broke my finger and watched it heal rapidly.

Minutes after my finger was as good as new.

This body was something else...

I giggled.

Okay... Now what?

What did I *want* to do now?

My breathing stopped as various desires showed themselves as soon I asked myself this question.

Sex, violence, punishment, oblivion, death.

I extended my arm. The world warped around it, and the landscape started shifting.

Bleak deserts, grim forests, shadowy mountains, threatening halls...

And then a strange sound resembling thunder hit my ears as three worlds crashed into each other.

On one side, a dead city, overrun with shapeshifting monsters of dark matter.

On the other, the glass shard grassland...

It gave me shivers of fear just from looking at it.

In the centre, a lush jungle gleaming with red sunlight and bioluminescent flora.

Sex and violence.

Punishment.

Oblivion.

The worlds met where I was standing, dividing the horizon into three even parts.

In the sky, red and blue suns were cut in half and joined like fruits of two different kinds.

"Are you leaving me?"

I heard Noelle. Her avatar was standing on a ruined street, with a tamed beast licking her fingers.

I considered. I wanted it equally as the other things.

To play dark games with Noelle and her pets, fight them until I inevitably lose and be hunted down, to be *preyed* upon.

To drink the nectar of the glowing plants and lose my mind.

To drag my bleeding, perfect body through sharpness.

The memories were encroaching on me quickly. The parasite gnawed on my skull... It wasn't time for it to hatch.

Not yet.

"Come."

Said Noelle's avatar and smiled.

She threw 8884 and pill-looking yellow things on the cracked pavement. A dozen of them.

'Compensation capsules'...

"Take it."

I sighed longingly at the other worlds and stepped into the dead city.

The avatar was gone, but the beast stayed. It threatened me with a growl.

I made careful steps towards the beast and my weapons...

The beast prepared to pounce...

I dropped.

Somehow I knew how to grab its wolf-like jaws. It struggled and growled.

I wasn't as strong as I no longer had my killtech "body"...

But combat experience didn't disappear.

My non-artificial muscles screamed as I began opening the beast's maw wider and wider...

Until I broke it.

Hot dark matter poured on me as the beast retreated, whining in agony and spraying its 'blood' everywhere.

I grabbed 8884 and shot at it.

A line in the air pierced the beast's head and it exploded.

*CLANG*

*TSSSSS*

"Fuck... Yeah..."

I made a nasty grin.

The rest of the beast's body collapsed and started liquefying.

I drank some of the blood while swallowing the 'compensation capsules'.

I heard an alien howling in the distance. I had to move...

A deadly game of cat and cat began... I moved from one ruined building to the other, using my expertise to find perfect sniper nests and choke points.

My bare feet couldn't heal fast enough, the ground here was littered with concrete debris, metal spikes, broken glass...

I don't know what 8884 was loaded with, but it cleaved through everything in my way and never ran out of ammo.

The beasts started to eat corpses that I left in my path.

That made them grow larger...

I lost, in the end.

My hand was bitten off by one from a swarm of bat-like creatures, as I was making kill after kill.

8884 was out of reach, still grasped by my separated limb.

Beasts encircled me.

Noelle's avatar held my head on her lap, as the beasts one after another penetrated, bit, scratched, stung, clawed...

I laughed, screamed, and wriggled helplessly until I lost consciousness...

<...>

I regained it at the edge of the jungle world...

Noelle's city world was just behind me, black and red blood had left a trail, I must have dragged myself across the dead city to where I was now.

Faint memories let me guess what happened... At some point of the torture, I went berserk and managed to get out of there.

I broke Noelle's neck with an elbow strike I think...

Oh. I regrew my limb... Or several... The beasts might have devoured my legs as well.

Shaking from memories, I crawled towards the nearest violet-leafed plant with a massive vase-like flower.

I put my hand into the 'vase' and found the nectar.

I dipped my fingers in it and retrieved some of the nectar...

It tasted toxic and sweet, yet I knew that was just another state of the generator matter. Black honey...

I disappeared in a timeless fog as I healed through regeneration, hallucinated and danced from the nectar.

I moved from flower to flower feasting on their 'nectar' not knowing who I was, not having a single memory, just a body hijacked by the compounds, otherworldly neurotransmitters in my brain...

<...>

"Oh, hi."

Said Kaede in the shape of a young man with ragged clothes.

His hair was black and messy, hands and lips darkened from nectar, eyes in pits of tired skin, he seemed severely sleep-deprived.

He was sitting near a torn-apart flower, all drained of its produce...

"Fuck you."

He added and showed me the middle finger.

I sat next to him.

"Why do I know your name?"

I giggled as I was really *high*.

"This is like the seventh time you stumbled into me... You whore."

"Mmmm... Yes, I'm a whore, helloooooooooooooooooo-"

"Fuck, shut up!"

"Why, haha... Haha. Why are you so angry?"

"One, you're fucking annoying, two, fuck you for creating this fucked up place."

"You sure like saying 'fuck'... Haha."

"Damn right..."

"You know, before you showed up I was like a thousand years clean."

"Then you came with your messed-up desire to get *really* messed up."

"Now, while I've run out of the desire to abuse substances I could create with my mind, you're still fresh..."

"You brought these damn plants and only a basic understanding of what substances do to you."

"Hey, I know what tripping feels like! I wasn't a child when I... Yeah."

Kaede scoffed.

"Is 'vortexx' still a thing outside?"

"Oh... Yes, it is. I haven't tried, though. Because I'm not insane..."

"So, like I was saying, basic understanding. Compared to 'vortexx' and derivatives, *everything* else is like mother's milk..."

"Mmm... Milk..."

"Shut up!"

"But yeah, what you've created is... Fresh. I'm already bored of it, but, fuck you, that was kind of... Decent."

"So thank me, motherfucker. Haha..."

"I only fuck fathers. And no, I won't... You've messed up everything. I had plans!"

"I want my world and setup back!"

"Get lost, will you?"

"You're no fun..."

"Look, better late than never. You won't be high forever... You'll gain tolerance. And I won't give you any of my shit, so..."

"Stop while the high is good, yeah?"

"Aw, so caring..."

"No, I want you to get lost!"

"Why don't you go get fucked by someone or something, fucking whore-in-heat, I'm sick of it..."

"I got you right here, why don't-"

"We went over it a dozen *f-u-u-u-cking* times, fuck!"

"But you still get fucking clingy when you're at the peak..."

"Like, fuck that! You don't really want me, so why the fuck..."

"Oh... Haha. Have you ever... Do me, though?"

"Fuck! No!"

"Gay."

"Stars, I fucking hate you."

"That's it..."

He stood up and kicked me in the stomach. But my pain was numbed down by what I was on.

"It tickles! Haha... Hahaha!"

"I will fuck you up, bitch!"

He kept kicking. Something inside me tore and I tasted blood in my mouth.

I was semi-lucid when he carried me to the edge of his/our world and threw me on glass needles...

It didn't hurt very much...

I danced further and further into the sharp world, leaving a blood trail behind me.

Getting hurt was kind of... Funny.

Until the high had worn off.

...

Withdrawal was... Immense.

The regenerative properties of my body kept me alive.

In excruciating misery...

I kept getting injured as I convulsed from the aftereffects of the nectar oblivion, from memories becoming clearer.

I was naked in the fields of glass grass, the hills of needles, the valleys of knives.

Memories came back and I cried from torture and happiness.

I was getting what I deserved.

I was *feeling*.

...

After what I could describe as an eternity, the pain turned into *just* pain...

Pointless, sickening pain.

No matter how much I hurt myself, I didn't undo what I've done.

The self-inflicted suffering lost its appeal, it seemed wasteful, indulgent even...

Like this torture could ever redeem me... No.

I will never feel okay with what I've done and that's that.

Getting punished means a sort of closure... And even if I deserve torment, I definitely didn't deserve *that*.

I was in a puddle of blood that shone purple under the blue sun.

The glass was poking through my flesh in multiple places...

I pulled my hand off the sharp spine and lifted my hand up.

The world warped around it...

<...>

<...>

<...>

I was half asleep... Softness under me.

The air I was breathing, perfectly warm and faintly smelling of lovely perfume.

The weightless thin sheet I was covered with, perfectly cool.

I opened my eyes.

Infinite... Bed?

Pink light was covering everything in gentleness.

With transparent curtains descending from the rosy mist.

Piles of pillows.

I guess that's what I wanted after a world where everything dug into my flesh...

"You're awake?"

A velvet voice. Stars, how is it even possible to have a voice that takes away the ability to think. I was half asleep... Softness under me.

The air I was breathing, perfectly warm and faintly smelling of lovely perfume.

The weightless thin sheet I was covered with, perfectly cool.

I opened my eyes.

Infinite... Bed?

Pink light was covering everything in gentleness.

With transparent curtains descending from the rosy mist.

Piles of pillows.

I guess that's what I wanted after a world where everything dug into my flesh...

"You're awake?"

A velvet voice. Stars, how is it even possible to have a voice that takes away the ability to think.

I turned.

Next to me, under the same sheet, yes, it was slightly transparent, laid almost *naked* woman, I assumed one of the foresters.

Her blonde hair was pink under the light and so was her curvy, absurdly erotic body.

She wore white lingerie, yes, it also was slightly transparent.

"My name... Iris. Hi... Hello?"

I realized I was speaking, or, at least a part of me. Not the brain, not the thinking bits at least.

"Hi! I'm Lina."

"Are you a unicorn?"

I asked, staring at a lengthy silver spike poking from her forehead.

Again, I was too flustered.

She laughed and my heart almost stopped.

Oh, stars...

I was... Getting wet.

"No, I'm a lina."

She smiled and that smile made my heart flutter against my chest like a trapped bird. Too gorgeous.

*A* Lina?

Whatever.

I got closer to her. She sat up.

Sheet slid off her and I bit my lip. Hhhhhhhhhh-

"Thank you..."

She whispered in my ear.

"Why-"

She took me by the shoulders and put my head on her lap.

"Because... Your need for comfort, that's what created this refuge."

"The purity of that need, oh... It's precious."

Her smell. Perfume with a slight hint of sweat.

My breathing turned shaky.

"Wai- Wait, wait."

I got scared.

She picked up my head and kissed me.

I teared up.

"Shhh... It's okay, it's okay. This is real, I won't disappear anywhere."

"I'll stay with you."

"Forget... Everything. And just... Feel. Let it take you over."

I placed my lips on her belly. Tasted her skin.

I was *losing* it.

The silky tips of her fingers travelled all along my body and ended up in my pussy.

"Ghhhh- Ssssssss..."

"Oh my, you're sensitive!"

She made a small, cute, slightly mischievous laugh.

Oh, stars... She may have been pristine in every way, but that voice was... Was... I had no words for it.

I got confused. I liked it rough, I think...

But it seems like I needed *this* as well.

I closed my eyes and rested on her lap as she stroked my folds, slowly, gently.

I got so fucking *wet*.

She moved her hand away.

"Noooooooo... Keep goinggggggg..."

I whined, mind foggy from pleasure.

I opened my eyelids a little and saw her licking her *fingers*.

The same ones that were... *Oh, stars*...

She spread her legs, my head ended up in between them.

I rolled on my stomach and got a great view of her soiled panties and her pretty flower behind them.

"Fuuuuuuuuuu-"

"-ck."

I looked up for an equally wonderful sight.

Our eyes made contact.

Her hands were on her chest, she seemed incredibly pleased with herself.

She sure knew what she was doing.

"Oh, fuck you..."

I rolled my eyes before pulling aside wet cloth with my teeth and revealing her pussy for me to gorge on.

Her giggle was no less arousing. And her moans... Fuck!

I'm so not worthy of her...

Yet that didn't stop me from tonguing her blossom.

She placed her hands on my head, holding to it, whining from pleasure, she was shamelessly loud.

"O-oh... I am in bliss... I need to return the favorrrrr. If only there was a w... Way to do that."

She said in a playful tone.

She crawled on top of me. I rolled belly-up, and a droplet of her juices landed on my face.

"Aaah!"

"Ohh... Lilith! No, Lana?"

She didn't correct me.

What the fuck was her nameeeeeeeeeee-

Whatever it was, she was eagerly licking my pussy.

I grabbed her ass and she descended letting me... Well, you know, sixty-nine with her.

...

I came. She did too, I guessed feeling her tongue going stiff inside me and the trembling of her body.

I was panting as I lay next to her.

She was sitting and playing with her hair.

It ticked when she leaned and kissed me, again and again.

These short kisses won't do...

I buried my fingers in her hair and weaved my tongue around hers until I was out of air.

"Lynn, I... This... I love-"

My eye twitched. I couldn't breathe.

"I don't... I don't deserve this."

I gasped out.

My chest got locked up by terror, by the extreme contrast of what my existence was then, and what it was now.

Something is wrong, wrong, wr-...

Scraping against my dome...

She embraced me, held me as I quaked from shock, whispered calming words as tears rained down...

It ended.

I made a deep, quivering sigh.

I rested my face on the softness of her chest, slowly calming down.

I got on my side and she hugged me from behind.

Oh... It was nice. I almost let tears loose again.

She was breathing on my neck.

O-oh...

Slight pain in the back of my head.

Huh?!

"Don't move..."

"Ohh... It's vast. Your memory... Mmm..."

My memory. It was weighing down on me. Crushing me...

But... It got lighter.

Memory...

Parts of it vanished.

I knew it wouldn't return.

I hear her shuffle.

I turned to her.

Her... Spike was bloody.

"W-hat..."

I stammered.

"Shh..."

She placed a finger on my lips.

She moved.

Her breasts were now at my eye level.

"Please..."

She begged in the sweetest voice.

I couldn't resist.

I knew that something was wrong, something... I don't know what.

I wrapped my lips around her nipple and suckled.

I dragged my tongue back and forth on her tits.

Groped them.

Played with them.

My mouth was full of her breast and I really *sucked* on it.

"M-m-m-m-m-m-mm-m-m-mmmmm..."

Huh!?

I felt sweetness in my mouth.

Looked at her chest. Yes, I'm not mistaken. She was leaking milk.

"L-lisaaaa!"

I gasped.

She was again above me and I was mouthing her breasts, switching between them, trying to catch every drop.

Some got away from me and got on my skin.

Her knee pressed against my pussy, and I ground against it, not stopping to suck intensively.

Our moans got louder until...

She sat on my chest, making me yelp in surprise, and then... She rubbed her fingers on her pussy like she was trying to start a fire.

"Aaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh-"

She wailed.

And started... Squirting?! All over my face?

"Hhhh-"

I growled lustily and stuck my tongue out so some of *it* would get in my mouth.

She collapsed backwards.

"Ah..."

She made a lovely noise.

I touched her wet thighs... Fuck!

"Oh stars, Lily, oh stars..."

"Oh, yes..."

She replied, her otherworldly voice making the lewdest 'Yes' I've ever heard.

I pulled her crotch closer and started playing with her clit.

"Ohhh, yes, yes!"

The lewdest 'Yes' I've ever heard, again.

"No! No..."

She went away.

Her taste was inside my mouth... Fuck...

"No. You won't make me cum again. It would be unfair doing it to me twice in a row."

She made me sit.

Got behind me. And put fingers on my pussy.

They stroked the inside and I couldn't help myself but quiver from pleasure.

"Fuck... Yeah... Don't stop!"

"Oh?!"

She finger on the entrance of my ass.

My juices placed a role of a lubricant and she slid in...

"Gahhh-"

"F-u-u-u-u-c-k!"

"Mmm..."

My hands took the position on my sides and I rocked against her fingers.

"Mm... Mmm... Mm... Mmmmm-ahh!"

"Lucy... Lia-a-a-oh!"

"Leah!"

I sensed *something* at the back my of head and froze.

It was not right, not at all.

I tilted my head up and closed my eyes feeling nothing but her fingers moving in me.

Focus... Iris. Iris! Focus!

The wrongness on my head, something else was wrong besides the demon living in it.

I need to... Focus...

Foc-

She caught my clit between her fingers, squeezed, pulled, oh...

"Ahhh-mmm, mmmm-ohhh-"

I dropped face down, put my ass up, and started quaking from orgasm.

I felt her stroking my entire body, her thighs rubbing against my ass, oh...

Um...

She took my legs, pulled half of my body up, and...

Our pussies kissed.

Fuck...

"Does that feel good? It should. Hi-hi!"

I just mewled in response.

"That's right... Mmmm."

Our most sensitive bits slid across each other, our juices were running down my belly.

"Stars... Stars... F-u-u-u-u-u-u-c-k..."

Her grip on my legs tightened and she tugged me up as she was pressing down...

She started squirting again and that made everything go white for me.

My ears ringed, while she snuggled against me and got our legs tangled together.

She kissed my neck, chest, her lips played with my ear.

Mmm...

So good... So wet... So delicate.

"Leah... What are you-"

She flipped me over, her weight pinned me down...

Her lips caressed, kissed my back.

"Fuck yes, ohh, mmmnhhh-"

Her fingers got into my hair... And the other hand, into my pussy.

Discomfort in my head, an unfamiliar one.

Bad. Something bad is happening-

Ghh...

...

She wore me out in the end, my overstimulated body became weak and I curled up into a ball in her embrace, and drifted away...

...

Time passed by...

We spent a lot of it under the sheets, mostly not having sex, just... Being gentle, hugging, wrapping around each other, touching.

And sleeping a lot.

Sleeping-

... and grabbed it.

Huh?!

I woke up with surprise, I held something in my hand.

Lilian, or whatever her name is, whined.

I turned around. I was holding her by the 'horn'.

"Umm, release me?"

She asked, looking uncomfortable.

I did that immediately, realizing I was still grasping *it*.

"You woke up, my love."

"Wait-"

She kissed me and cupped my breast.

"I missed you..."

She gently laid me down, and my toes curled in anticipation-

No, no, I cannot, I have to...

Cold ran through me.

Something was missing.

My eye twitched.

"Mmmh!"

Her fingers felt so good. I could never have enough of her...

She was kissing and fingering me oh-so-passionately.

She knew my body so well by now, knew my weak spots.

She could control me...

Somewhere in the mist of pleasure, I was on my knees, her behind me, her hand on mine, my hand on my pussy.

She was also caressing my neck.

Fuck, she knew how much I loved it.

Wait. Something is-

Oh fuck, I'm gonna cum!

Something...

I yelped. And pulled her 'horn' out of my head.

In fear, I crawled backwards away from her.

"Lina! What-"

I became lightheaded, a sick feeling gathered in my stomach.

I don't remember.

I don't remember *something*!

Lina looked sad.

She was on her knees looking down.

"I..."

She began. And stopped.

"What the fuck are you?!"

I was almost yelling. My voice trembled.

"What- What were you doing to me?!"

"Weren't... Weren't you... Happy?"

She asked quietly.

"What is going on?!"

"Just..."

She shuffled closer to me.

"Can you forget this? Just... Let's move on. I'll- I'll satisfy you. Ask me anything and I'll do it."

"I'll love you. I'll hold you... You're safe. You can sleep in my arms forever..."

"You're still trying?"

"..."

"I can't... I cannot let you distract me..."

"No more..."

"I need to know, Lina... Tell me what is going on. I cannot feel safe until I know."

Tears shimmered in her eyes as she stared deep into me.

She was hurting. A lot...

Part of me wanted to comfort her, forget *that* and see her feel relaxed, joyful again.

"Very well... I'm sorry. I'm s-... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry..."

"I... Your... Your memories."

"I... Take them."

I exhaled. I don't know what I was more terrified of.

That I lost those few good memories or one of many bad ones.

I just recovered them and they were burning like embers in my mind...

But they made me a person, freed me from a machine existence.

I could not lose them. No, no, no...

"It's okay, it's... Okay. You have many memories. You can be with me forever."

"I hate that you lied to me... But even if you've been honest and told me the moment I met you. I can't."

"Don't do that."

"I don't want to leave you. I don't want to make you sad."

"So just... Stop."

"I c-can't... It's like sickness. Like hunger. I don't control it."

"I tried my best, many times. Many times before. But this is the best way."

"I cannot stop myself from lying or from... Taking."

"The *need* controls me and I end up doing this... To people. Whether I want it or not, and I don't."

"Kaede... I took half of his memories. Four million years... And I was much less kind then."

"I was... Good to you, haven't I?"

"I couldn't stop it. But I could choose how. So I chose the kindest way, I wanted to hurt you as little as possible."

I said nothing, I was too... Overwhelmed.

"Everyone leaves me. I murdered a few with this. I can... I can take all the memories, at once. Others... Ran away."

"Only because of years of growing self-control, willpower, my love for you, I was able to hold back."

"Lina... I don't know what to say..."

"Just... Let me talk. I'll- I'll try to explain myself."

"Kaede has his chemicals. Piotr and Noelle, before Thomas broke her, had creativity. After, she... Turned *carnal*."

"Thomas... Well, he was a monster, until Noelle reduced him to mindless mess."

"Gabriella likes to *play* with people... Laurent is interested in life and death, the act of killing."

"..."

"We all have something to fill this endless existence that reveals our true desires."

"Me? After I experienced everything there is to experience myself... I grew a taste for the experiences of others."

"I had reactions to experiences, but I didn't have all of them, because I can feel only what *I* can feel."

"And I am not that good at it..."

"I needed to feel what others felt. I do have empathy, but it's a mere fraction of what I've learned to take."

"Entertainment turned into addiction. Addiction into illness. Illness to loss of self."

"I have barely any memories of my own left."

"I don't know who I was. And new memories hardly trigger anything in me... You are a delightful exception to that. But I still..."

"I still need... Medium to have proper feelings, to taste *us* through your mind..."

"So I am just that, a medium?"

She recoiled like slapped from hearing that and turned away her eyes.

"N-no."

She whispered, hurt.

"You brought me a need for care that I haven't experienced... In forever."

"I need you more than simply *that*..."

"I don't remember ever feeling this good... And you're wonderful. I tasted your memories."

"So much bleakness. Yet you persisted. You need care and rest..."

"And I need you. All of you... Not just..."

"I would beg you to stay. But I see it in your eyes. It's... Over."

She started crying.

I'll never know if she was honest or manipulative.

I know she believed herself when she said these things...

But were those true feelings or just lies she herself was prey to?

...

As I was trying to entangle my own feelings...

*blur*

She lunged towards me, and only my honed awareness let me react in time to kick her away.

She *hissed* through her teeth.

Breathed heavily and stared at me with empty eyes in which I could see so much hunger...

The only traces of humanity in them were of grief.

I moved away from her not daring to look away.

"If I can't have you *our* way... I'll have you *my* way!"

*blur*

And she was on me. So fucking fast... Inhumanly so.

Her 'horn' scraped my forehead. Blood ran down my face...

We were frozen in a stance. Her hands were on my neck, 8884 stabbing at her stomach.

I found 8884 under a pile of pillows, just in my reach...

I saw spikes on her wrists...

Transparent drops formed on the ends of them as we breathed unevenly, considering what would follow.

Whatever *that* was, I probably did not want it in my system.

Blood mixed with my tears...

"Lina... Back away... Slowly."

"If I pull the trigger, I might actually kill you. I don't..."

I sobbed.

"I don't want to kill you."

"I'm sorry, I'm... Forgive me. *FORGIVE* me!"

Desperation, despair, a hopeless demand...

Her humanity was competing with *need*. I saw under what strain she's been.

The seduction she was drowning me in all this time, she used it to distract herself as well.

The love we both showed to each other was keeping us both in a delightful haze that was hiding a gruesome truth...

But that part in her that was *her*... It was just a sliver, a fading spark in the depths of animalistic obsession.

"Is... Lina even your true name?"

"I don't know... I forgot it. I... Forget me... Forget what I've done... What I am... Love what I am. Please-"

Her muscles made the slightest hint. I pulled the trigger and only her speed let her adjust the trajectory and avoid the invisible line of annihilation.

She grabbed herself by the neck and *forced* herself to take a less threatening pose...

"Go... Leave. Please."

"Don't hate me..."

"I won't. I will never. And I won't forget you."

Sorrow was rising up my throat, straining it as I was trying to gulp it down.

A loving glow of that world turned grey as my heart shattered.

I don't know if I was truly in *love* with her, or just merely enjoyed her warmth.

It was a sweet dream while it lasted.

Was any of it *real*? Maybe.

But what was tearing me apart from the inside was real.

I knew I wouldn't break. I went through *all* barriers. No tragedy could stop me.

I extended my arm.

I wanted to leave, to run away, to distance myself so I could feel less of her sadness, flowing like a cold wind from her.

The world fractured, ready to reform...

She jumped at me suspecting that I was distracted enough by that.

She was right. But my instincts...

She collapsed at my feet with a hole in her chest.

Black and red pooled under her in the colourless remains of our dead paradise.

I left.

Ended up somewhere... In a small void, in a hole world to hide from everything, so I could cry my guts out.

Just me and my sorrow.

Then a merciful sleep took me...

<...>

<...>

<...>

Here, the difference between having consciousness and not, was almost nill.

I was walking on an unfeelable surface towards a non-existent direction, basking in non-light.

The sea of sorrow has dried up and now I had nothing in me, but a bitter desert salted by tears.

I knew that at some point I needed to start feeling something else, but not yet...

After not-a-while, I heard a sound that was disturbing the nothingness.

Crying... Someone was crying, wailing in misery.

Me too, friend-by-the-loss, me too...

I lost whatever I had with Lina.

That other person, I realized when I approached... Has lost themselves it seemed.

The sobs, the wails, they lacked humanity behind them.

Sourceless misery, the terror of being unable to have sentience, that's what these awful sounds tried to tell the world.

But it was a world of void, no scream could escape it...

This must be Thomas, I guessed. If I stayed with Noelle, that likely would have been my fate as well.

Or perhaps I would have turned into a counterpart of hers and the mad twins would have drowned the bubble universe in carnal chaos.

I left Thomas.

Spots of grey started arriving into the void as I began to consider what I wanted next.

If I were to join the foresters in *this*, what was my 'thing'?

I mean, sex was *fucking amazing*, violence too.

Merely *feeling* something had a tinge of ecstasy... It probably wouldn't last, though, I'd get acclimated to being a person again.

That was fine by me.

Right then I craved the *intensity* of emotion, it didn't matter if it was a 'good' or a 'bad' one, as long as it was overwhelming.

And after *her* I needed...

Obsession, madness, something to occupy my mind, anything to escape the skull-scraping brokenheartedness...

Nothingness world twisted into a tunnel.

I stepped through it...

<...>

I shivered from the chill.

I was standing on the cold, wet sand.

I was on a moonlit beach, a straight shore dividing the landscape into two distinct colours, bluish grey of sand, and almost black indigo of water.

The breeze was minimal and there were no waves in the blue.

I started walking along it.

I knew which direction was right. Didn't know why was it right, but it seemed important to follow that inner compass.

It's odd, I didn't lose that together with the rest of the killtech.

Might be another trick of the bubble universe.

Or perhaps that inexplainable feeling of direction wasn't granted by killtech...

I spotted a curious dot in the horizon, which turned into a strange shape as I got closer, and into an odd statue of black material-

Oh...

It was like a creation of a *new-age neo-avant-garde* style.

Lines and blocks of flat harmoniously and disharmoniously grew from its foundation.

Okay.

I continued walking.

More abstract statues...

Some had fallen on their sides, others still standing.

One was poking from the water.

All different in some way.

I spotted one that looked like the shape of a person, but with a "face" hollowed out.

Elsewhere, there was a pile of miniature versions of similar statues.

With every few hundred steps there were more and more of these things.

It didn't seem like their creator cared about them much, as they were left in these random, thoughtless arrangements and piles.

Discarded works.

...

Something danced on the horizon now.

A little light, surrounded by the biggest statues I've seen so far.

There was a little camp.

An old rug on the ground, a bucket full of water, a crumpled and aged sleeping bag, a table made of driftwood and broken planks, a box for a chair.

A cracking bonfire.

Stacks of paper sheets on the table, some attached with candle wax on the sides of the statues that created a small shelter from the breeze.

On the "chair" sat a man with long, grey hair.

He was bare-footed, with crumpled, worn, blue jeans and a grey T-shirt.

He was sharpening a pencil with a knife when I approached him.

I looked at the hanging sheets.

Shapes. Lines. Words and numbers.

He must be an author of the odd artistic litter he filled the beach with.

"There you are... I felt you enter my world. I'm not gonna ask, I don't care."

"Name's Piotr. Yes, a forester."

"You may rest in my sleeping bag, but I must warn you if you're waiting for dawn, it won't come."

He didn't let me speak, he was rushing to end the conversation, and he wasn't looking at me, focused on his pencil.

"Hi, Piotr, I'm Iris... What's up with the statues?"

He made a deep sigh, put away the pencil and finally looked at me.

He tilted his head a little and scanned my naked body.

It didn't seem sexual for some reason, I knew he wasn't thinking about groping me as he did it.

"Could you turn three sixty degrees for me? Slowly."

Sure, why not...

"Hmm... See, that's the problem. Good shape you have, I suppose. But it's not perfectly imperfect."

"Not by my definition at least, no need to be offended."

"So, if we grossly simplify, that's what I'm trying to accomplish."

"A definite geometry."

"Work that would satisfy me."

"What you've already seen, these are mere prototypes."

"I have been on this for a while..."

He noticed me wrapping my hands around myself from the cold as the wind intensified for a moment there, before calming down again.

"Hmm... Second."

He tossed a ragged, long... Cloth.

Whatever it was, it was too eroded by time, only the strong fibres were left on it.

I put it on and instantly felt warmer.

"Well, there you go... As the saying goes, beautiful even in a potato sack, yeah?"

I scoffed when I heard an unexpected compliment.

Piotr nodded at me and within minutes filled five blank pages, inspected them as quickly, and then tossed them away.

"Right."

He said.

"If you're not planning on leaving, would you be interested in helping me?"

"How? You want me to model for you or something?"

"Not quite. I need... Inspiration."

"I'm not into men, but I could give you a handj-..."

He sighed, still working on his pages.

"Not like that... I want you to make something of your own. I made most of the possible shapes over the years."

"I need new ideas and my own wells of the new have run dry."

"Make me... Something."

I thought for a bit.

Sure.

"How do you make these statues anyway?"

"Hmm..."

"Clay of the generator, I can shape it how I want."

"Don't really know how to do that, guess I can go draw in the sand or something..."

I twitched uncontrollably and with trembling hands, grabbed my forehead.

IT WANTS OUT IT WANTS OUT IT WANTS OUT IT WANTS OUT IT-

"Hmm..."

"I could teach you."

I needed something, anything to distract me. Love, lust, and violence, I had been sated with that for now...

But I couldn't be left with my thoughts.

Lina. Noelle. Kaede. Anna... Sophia.

"Y-yes... T-... Teach me."

I pushed out the words.

In panic, I grabbed the side of my head... Nothing.

For a moment it felt like the creature poked its jagged leg through my skull.

Not yet...

I calmed down a bit, and with a more confident voice confirmed that I wanted to learn.

He threw away the latest page, filled with what looked like scribbles of a dementia patient.

He turned to me and unexpectedly pulled the cloth up and put his hand on my stomach.

"Uh..."

"Close your eyes. Focus on the touch of my hand."

"Now deeper, the inside you, just under my palm..."

Warmth and pulsation.

"Do you feel it, the pure creation?"

I think so...

"It is full of potential. Let it..."

I dropped to my knees and started puking on the sand.

The black stuff...

"Yes, you have plenty... Good. Let it..."

Blobs of liquid matter slowly lifted from the ground and started orbiting me.

"Let it..."

I extended my arm... It was a bit like changing worlds.

Become... The most striking shape Piotr has ever seen...

The dark matter exploded and then coalesced into a... Meaningless black, almost round... Thing.

"Hmm..."

"Okay, we can begin then."

What followed a most brutal course by Piotr about "spatial aesthetic dynamics" - he apologized for the pretentiousness and said that the term was coined by Noelle before she was-...

He grimaced. I was not the only one with an infested brain.

Circles, squares, rectangles, triangles...

These were primary shapes, according to Piotr. But you wanted more than mathematics from geometry, if you wanted to achieve "dynamism" and "spatiality", more complex shapes and "vectors" were needed...

The L shape. Binary contouroid. Protruding summit. "Kiwi". Line-curve-line system.

There was an absurd amount of these. A mere change of a fraction of a degree to a "baseline complex" shape gave it a different name, I was told later.

He proceeded to list over a hundred "deviations" a. k. a. "isotypes" of triangle-triangle intersection and sketched them one by one.

I could barely tell any difference between them, but he assured me this was important.

After three cycles of wake-up, eat, be bombarded by arcane terms and concepts for hours, go to sleep, he took me to one of the statues and asked me to list "spatial elements" and "focal mentors" on it, describe the "anatomy" of "simple-complex" a. k. a. "simplex" shape, which apparently was more complex than "complex" shapes.

"To explain it two-dimensionally, imagine three dots on a piece of paper, in a line, and even distances from each other."

"That is what I would call a simple composition."

"Then we add more dots on different vectors originating from the central point of the composite triad."

"At uneven distances from the central point."

"That's complex. The axioms are inconsistent or there's an unknown limited number of them, it's almost systemless."

"But now..."

He proceeded to make a cloud of dots with a repeating pattern of the initial three dots amidst the chaotic ones.

"And that's simple-complex. It has both consistency and inconsistency, making it very difficult to process even two-dimensionally."

"Simplex... A lot of things in the world fall into this category, but the human mind cannot intuitively analyze this type of composition."

"It is a shame, the world would be a lot better if we could... But our primitivity..."

Quiet despair in Piotr...

He shook his head, asked me if I was tired and if I wanted to end this cycle.

Maybe the thousandth time I answered this question with a 'no'.

Mania is what I wanted. To get lost in this weird, yet slightly intriguing 'science' Piotr obsessively developed over 'many years'.

I would go to sleep with my brain hurting from all the shapes, isotypes, shapoids, and dream them instead of travelling back in time to Lina's gone world...

It wasn't just about learning terms, I also got taught to use the 'power of creation' that I held a vast amount of in me.

I would have jokingly called it Noelle's cum, but I didn't want Piotr to hear that name.

My compositions got more and more detailed, even had the limited inconsistency, the semi-controlled chaos of "simplexity" to them.

I could understand maybe a 1% of what was in Piotr's head every waking second.

Which was definitely a mental disorder, mostly.

And the ultimate goal of it was achieving "complex-simplexity", the "fourth dimension" of "spatial dynamics" *and* making it aesthetically pleasing.

He didn't even try to explain to me what it was.

At some cycles, he would come back to his table to scribble what I could never understand.

Once I even witnessed him creating one of his statues-, I mean, spatial compositions...

Probably due to the absurd, dream-like logic of the bubble universe, he kept his 'power of creation' in what resembled cans of canned food he had piles and piles of.

He even had a can opener...

I witnessed him almost instantly turning it into a mess in which I could name a few details of, using his nonsense words.

Using definitely incorrectly.

What followed was Piotr collapsing on the sand and sobbing.

He was not satisfied with what he created...

I wondered if he ever could, or if it was even possible to make what would be in line with the "simplex" ruleset.

Yet he got himself together, stood up, and came back to our routine.

At some point I've got my own obsession, to impress Piotr with my progress and my creation.

He claimed that I did help him to come up with new compositions and "isotypes", which he seemed pretty satisfied with.

He never showed any sign of irritation with me failing again and again, to follow the rules and apply my knowledge.

With infinite patience, he corrected me a thousand times.

Sometimes he would apologize for his perfectionism and insanity of what I was being taught.

<...>

I yawned.

I was next to a finished composition.

I caught myself criticizing myself for using a 'wrong' 'isotype' to embellish one of the 'structural arms' of the composition.

I sighed.

I stood up, brushed sand off my knees, and came closer to Piotr's improvised 'workstation'.

A ball of discarded sheet flew past me.

"Piotr..."

He didn't stop his 'work'.

"Oh... It's time, isn't it?"

It was.

"Well, I am grateful for your presence in my world. I knew it was not permanent and that you would leave."

"I understand."

"You don't really care about this. But I appreciate you for not mocking me or insulting me."

"For your attention of truly trying to comprehend and learn my craft."

"I've got plenty of innovative ideas from watching you."

"Insight from observing someone interact with what you've made is invaluable."

"For all that, I wholeheartedly thank you."

A small spike in my heart. I pitied him...

Consumed by obsession, tortured by complete lack of understanding from others, lack of appreciation, lack of company, endless loneliness, merciless perfectionism.

That's who was Piotr, a forester of the SUNTG-14 bubble universe...

I embraced him for a good minute, then turned towards the ocean.

Water froze in front of me and I walked on it until I hit the fake horizon of his world and ripped through it...

<...>

<...>

<...>

I dropped on some vegetation, some type of bush, and the landing was quite soft compared to previous ones.

I emerged from the green and ended up on an old asphalt road. It went by the beach below, behind the concrete sea wall.

Another beach?

A few hundred meters further there was a few colourful buildings. A tiny beach town.

There were three suns in the sky for some reason. It was hot, but wind gusts were refreshing.

Much better compared to the existential cold of Piotr's tomb.

I needed it at the time, but that has passed...

I touched my chest.

Discomforting numbness, still present in my heart. Did I really **** her?

Or was it a shock from recovering myself, only to be used, abused again...

YOU *DID* LOVE HER, YOU PATHETIC IMITATION OF A PERSON, WHY CAN'T YOU LEARN, YOU-

I drew air through my teeth.

Okay.

I needed a distraction.

To the town, then.

There were a few cars parked next to the buildings, and generic cultpop was playing from somewhere.

Being closer I started to notice a few *imperfections* that reminded me again, after the three suns, that I was not in my universe.

Cars didn't have handles, and wheels were rough rubber pentagons.

Signs were misspelt or of an adjacent language, maybe even neolanguage.

"BAAR", "FOD & RDINKS", "One naight 400NU$"...

On one of the buildings windows simply were, like, painted on the walls or something.

I shrugged to myself and followed the music.

I walked through the bar.

It was devoid of people, much like the rest of the town, as much as I could tell.

But someone was on the wooden terrace on the other side of the bar building.

There were two round tables under the umbrella roofs, several chairs, including two beach chairs.

Stairs were there too, for when there was a desire to go down to the beach.

Cultpop was pouring from a radio on one of the tables.

There was a glass of a half-finished cocktail with a slice of lemon on the side.

Cozy.

One of the beach chairs was occupied by a small figure, she didn't comment on my presence.

Must be sleeping.

She was wearing a white summer dress, eyes shielded by sunglasses.

Everything about her stated 'cute' and 'girly'.

Even her- Okay I'm not staring at sleeping gal's feet, if I'll want to, I'll ask once she wakes up, for stars' sake.

Get your shit together, you pervert.

Pretty toes, pink nail polish on-

Annoying thoughts, annoying thoughts...

Her hair was straight, dense, also pink, cut in a lovely bangs style I also had in my teenage years-

Skittering inside my hollowed skull.

YOU WILL NEVER BE THAT PERSON AGAIN-

I grabbed the cocktail and finished immediately, the drink was so cold that it made my gums hurt.

I clumsily slammed the glass back on and collapsed on the empty chair.

After my breathing calmed down, I turned my head.

I met the gal's stare,, she had her sunglasses lifted.

"Hey, my drink! That's very rude..."

She blushed and broke eye contact.

"S-sorry. I... Uh, yeah."

"It's okay if you'll buy me another one later..."

She mumbled.

"Do I look like I have any much money?"

I smiled apologetically. I'm sure she's a forester or equivalent, but sure.

Let's play an adorable encounter, let's play I'm not WHAT I AM-

I clawed my thigh to distract myself on the side where she couldn't see...

... that this is really a town on the beachside and not a manifestation of our combined desires in the bubble universe.

Speaking of...

"But I can find another way to repay you."

"Like?"

She raised an eyebrow. Cutely.

"O-oh! You don't mean..."

She turned red and covered her face with her hands.

Wow...

So shy. Makes me...

Kind of turned on.

"I mean, why not..."

"If you don't object to it..."

I bit my lip.

"Nooo..."

She whined under her hands.

It was the kind of performative 'No' that quite possibly meant 'Yes'...

Well, well, I'll find out what you've meant, you precious creature, that we can pretend you are.

I got SO turned on by the idea of doing all sorts of very lewd things to her and watching her sweet reactions.

"Oh, well... No means no, after all."

She spread her fingers and looked at me through the gaps.

"But there's no other way I could settle this debt."

"I don't have *nothing* besides this rag."

I pulled the cloth to emphasize, or, well, to reveal more of my legs.

"N-nothing."

She whispered. And shuffled, embarrassed.

She turned away from me.

"S-so, what brings you here... My name is Rica, by the way, what's y-yours?"

She clumsily tried to change the subject.

I didn't take the bait and leaned over her.

I wish I could show some cleavage and fluster her even more, but whatever my rags used to be, they were not made for that.

"Are you into women or something?"

I whispered in her ear.

"Yes... But..."

"Mmmmm, but what?"

"Um..."

"I've never done it with a woman b-before..."

Oh, this is getting *good*.

"Done what? Wait... Do you think I was gonna do something *sexual* with you? Get your head out of the gutter, woman!"

"I thought I could just do some errand for you."

I switched gears trying to throw her off.

It worked.

"Oh, sorry! I don't know what came over me..."

"Kill meeeee..."

So embarrassed. The redness of her face was somewhere in the black body spectrum.

Fuck, I *need* to *fuck* her right now.

"But..."

"Um..."

"Uh... Nevermind."

She mumbled and turned away again.

I see!

"Are you *disappointed*?"

I asked teasingly.

"No... I mean... Well..."

Oh, she's in trouble.

"Can I just... Look? I always wanted to... To..."

She trailed off.

"You want to see me naked, is that it?"

"C'mon, that's what porn is for. The Wired is chock-full of it, don't lie that you haven't seen *anything*."

"But it's not real..."

"And... Maybe I-... I- Maybe-I-want-to-touch-too!"

She gathered her bravery and quickly added to the sentence.

Her dark eyes were shimmering, she looked serious with a quiet ask.

After giving me this look she turned to the side, as if saying that *it's in your hands now*.

I put my lips almost on her ear.

"If you want a curvy, steel-meltingly hot, dominant woman to fuck the brains out of you, just let me know... And I'll make it happen..."

Her whisper was as quiet as the sound of a feather landing, but it was an unmistakable 'Yes'...

Fuck. Yes!

Mmm... I could feel electricity racing through my nerves, that's how into this I was.

"I-I mean... Wait, what- Ahh!"

I pulled her out of the chair, she wasn't heavy at all.

She dropped to her knees and you looked pissed.

"H-hey! You-"

Her speech jammed as I pulled off my rag with one swift move.

"Shut up! Enough teasing, get to work!"

Before she could admire my *rich* body I forced her head to my crotch and started rubbing my pussy against it.

She struggled, but I was stronger and didn't let her escape.

"What are you-

She started a muffled whine, but I interrupted.

"Tongue! Stick it o-out..."

I growled lustfully, which turned into high pitch mewl as her adorable tongue touched my... Fuck!

"Oh!"

She gasped.

"Don't be shy, you little slut, I know you want to submit, so get to ittttttttt- Oh... Ah!"

I continue grinding against her face.

Then she licked the most sensitive spot, I 'Hhhhhhhhhhh'ed out loud.

I stuffed my pussy to her mouth.

"Yes!!! There! Faster!!! Mmmm..."

"G-good girllllll-"

A dozen oh-so-eager licks *there* and I came. F-fuck.

I pulled her face away and still gripping her hair spasmed from pleasure.

Once I was done, for the most part, I looked down at her.

Rica's face was stained with my juices, her eyes were staring into the distance, she wasn't blinking.

And, oh my, her modest pink triangle was still sticked out, she was panting with her mouth open a bit.

A drop of saliva dripped from the tip of it... Fuck! F- Fuck!

I grabbed her arm, forced her up, turned her around, took her by the throat - gently, yet firmly - and another hand to her-

Wait... What? Wh-

Ow!

Her elbow hit my stomach with a surprising amount of violent intent.

I couldn't breathe and fell to my knees as red stars danced in my vision.

"My turn now."

I heard her saying, shyness gone from her voice entirely.

Now I could hear a joyful malice instead.

She pulled her skirt up.

What the-

She had a dick. It was clearly hard, but an elastic band was keeping it on the side of her leg.

So that's how I didn't see the bulge-

Wh-

I realized *her thing* was almost to her knee.

And girth... Was not modest at all!

Fuck, what's going on...

But I was not given any time to cum- To come to a logical conclusion that in the illogical bubble universe, everything was possible.

So why not a gal with a-

She pulled the band releasing the cock that instantly went horizontal.

The band made a slapping sound against her leg, when she released it.

She stopped holding her dress and it slid down, with her cock poking out it.

It was throbbing. Rica grabbed it and slathered herself with copious precum seeping from it.

It smelled like she hadn't showered for a while. Fuck.

She did not hesitate. Now her hand was in my hair.

Where did that innocent Rica disappear?!

"Wait- Wait!"

"I'm not! I'm not into this!"

She stopped stroking her cock and gently touched my cheek with her *slimy* hand.

*The smell*

Her other hand gripped my hair and got my face at an uncomfortable upward angle.

"Why, I thought you were gay?"

"Oh... This? You mean my girl-cock?"

"Of course I meant your fucking cock!"

"Hey, hey, calm down."

"And don't try to escape. I may not be strong, but I can make you weak."

She tugged at my hair with cruelty.

"No, seriously, stop..."

Okay, so in my old life, yes, I was with a few men. I don't know, exploration, I liked their personality, etc.?

But sex wasn't that great, it was kind of gross, so I just ended up hooking up with women or equivalent of, exclusively.

And I didn't *need* dick when there were so many *tasty* pussies to eat out and scissor with and-...

She poked the side of my face with her rosy glands. I guess it really was her colour, I thought spitefully.

"I'm so fucking disappointed... Can I fist you through?"

"But I want to fuck you..."

"I want you to submit to me, completely. I want you to be my *fuck toy*"

"It's just a... Built-in strap-on, you like strap-ons, don't you?"

Um, yes???

"I can't hear a 'no'..."

She started rubbing *it* on the side of my face, my neck.

"It's kind of gross..."

I said and hated the weakness in my voice.

She was supposed to be in this position not *me*!

"I'm still a woman, you know? You sure you don't want to at least *try*?"

And she made a nasty giggle. Her voice was sweet, even when tainted by her sudden change into something demonic.

"Think about it... Being fucked, violated by my girl-dick. Choking on it, drinking my semen, salivating like an unpaid whore you are..."

"In your pussy, in your ass. Fucked over and over until you get full of cum... Impregnated whore."

"No inhibitions, no mercy..."

"Something tells me that it's your *place* and not what you pretended to be."

"I-I can be... Like you..."

I stammered fighting the images she was putting my head. Yeah, images, more like 18K experiences, 1PB-per-second all-senses-feast™!...

"Ha! That may be, you were pretty convincing. But... I *know* what you want, I can feel it."

Wait, could she read my mind like other foresters?!

Well... Fuck me Rica, fill me with your feminine rod, make me beg for my life!

Read *that*!

Not like I *didn't* want it, I don't know...

Maybe I'm not *not* into dick if it's on a woman?!

Is it still lesbian sex? Does it matter if it isn't?

What if...

"What you're thinking about? Something's different..."

She narrowed her eyes.

"Whatever... So, what'll be?"

"Do you want me to make you worship my cock after I'm done with you?"

"Or no... Just hands? Can I make you bleed? Can I break your limbs? Can I piss on you?"

"Can I tie you to a pole and finger you until you pass out? Or deny you your orgasm?"

"Let me out... Sell your body and mind to me and I'll grant you ecstasy..."

She's a fucking demon.

"It doesn't smell like a guy's thing doesn't it?"

Wh- Hhhhh-

The smell...

Yes, it doesn't? I think?!

"What do you want?!"

She raised her voice at me and tugged on my hair again.

I teared up.

"I d-don't know! I don't know..."

"If you want a tiny, cutesy, girly gal with a monster cock to conquer you like you have never been conquered before, just let me know..."

"And. I. Will. Make. It. Happen."

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck...

She groaned, she was frustrated, pent-up.

She released me, dragged her skirt over her dick and turned her back to me.

"Fine... Get lost, before I fucking *assault* you, this is my only warning."

"... yes."

"What was that?!"

She pushed her cock into my face and grabbed the sides of my head.

"Yes!"

I cried out angrily and hopelessly. Take me, fucking take me!!!

She made a threatening giggle.

And slowly pushed her entire length right into my poor throat.

No.

Air...

I swear my neck bulged.

"Mnh- Eeemm... Mmm, ahh!"

Despite the war crime she was committing to me, she moaned with that deceptive voice of hers.

Some innocent-looking cutely shy girlfriends of mine turned out surprisingly rotten in bed sometimes, loved that shit.

Rica was that... But dominant.

Extremely.

A real-

Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-

She started *fucking my throat* with such abandon and tempo I thought that I'm really *done for* now.

And I *loved* it.

She ripped her cock out of me and showered my face in transparent semen.

"I'm cummingggggggggggggggggggg-"

Yeah, no kidding... Mmmm... H-how did it taste like-

Oh... Kind of savory, nutty even, I could sa-

It got into my nose and *trachea*.

I started coughing uncontrollably until I could breathe again.

As I stopped dying, I regained awareness of Rica, she was licking my face now.

And kissing.

Her seed mixed in our mouths...

That was kind of *hot*, I couldn't lie.

...

I touched the slightly painful corner of my lips. Ow.

I saw some red on my finger.

She tore it a bit during the roughness.

Rica was getting out her dress. Unhooked a white bikini top, with a strawberry print.

Her nipples were pierced, with silver spikes poking from their sides.

"Come here... *Please*"

She wasn't really asking me, she ordered.

I considered for a second whether to make her *make* me or-

"I said, *please*...*

She grabbed my hair again and dragged me towards the beach chair.

"Ow, ow, wait-"

I crawled on the chair not wanting to test how cruel she could be to my hair roots.

"On your back. Spread out."

"Good slut."

Oh, stars, she's gonna penetr-

Ngh!!

Her *head* dipped into my girl hole.

"Fuck! Yes! Fuck me!!!"

"If you say so..."

She said playfully and...

Ow ow ow ow! Not the girl hole I was expecting!!

Rica tunnelled deep into my ass and I started to suck air through my teeth.

"It hurtssssss-"

"Do. You. Want. Mmhh... Me. To. Stop."

She asked with the thrusts.

Too much, this is too much, it was too big, too thick...

I heard myself moaning and gasping from... Was it pleasure? Pain? Submissiveness? I wasn't sure.

I tried to say something, but her cock made me into a quivering mess, so only incomprehensible lustful noises came out of me.

She stretched my girl hole out and increased the tempo that was already demonic.

Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ahhhhhhhh!!!

Why am I cumming?...

She pulled out only to penetrate my pussy. She stabbed me in the cervix and she wasn't even fully in.

"Yes... Oh, yesss-"

Mewled Rica triumphantly while pumping my reproductive opening with lots and lots of cum.

She didn't pull out until that stopped.

Surely we're done here-

... and shoved it in again.

Her nails dug into my thighs but I didn't feel pain as my nerve centres were completely overloaded.

She was trying to get the full length in me but there was no way that was gonna happen and she got frustrated.

Only to take out that frustration on me.

She was now aiming at my pussy walls slamming her cock with full force, with made the tip grind deeper in me until inevitably hitting my cervix.

Impact. Ahh-... Slide.... hhhhhhh-... Crash. -guh!!!

"... please stop! It's enough! Please-"

I heard myself begging, tears running down my face, saliva escaping from my lips as I would yell out moans and pleas to stop.

She leaned over my face while still assaulting my pussy. Her small tits jiggled.

"Should I? Stop. This? Mmm?"

"Please! Please! No more!"

I was not in control so I could only hope that she saw in my eyes that I *didn't* want her to stop.

Rica smiled making a grin, which to those she haven't invaded yet might have looked sweet, innocent even.

Oh no, it was evil, a crescent of unlimited malice.

She got her fingers in my mouth, fished out the tongue and pulled it out, then began rubbing the roof of my throat.

Impact. Slide. Crash.

"Lica I lov yoou..."

I tried to say with my tongue hopelessly hanging out of my mouth, any dignity in this entire 'interaction' with her stripped away from me.

She took out her fingers and slapped the side of my face with unrestrained aggression, so badly that I bit myself.

"Don't. Ever. Say. That. Word. Or. I. Will. Murder. You... Ahhh, mmm, oh yesssss!!!"

She made sounds of bliss while unloading her semen once again.

She collapsed on me and bit one of my breasts, badly. While mewling with that lovely sugary voice of hers. I quaked under her little frame, I could feel the chair becoming *wet*. She didn't pull out.

She proceeded to claw the side of my neck and lick the blood.

And... And resumed fucking me.

Slowly at first, but it felt like every pause between halved each time she... She... Hhhhhhhhhhh-

With blurry vision I saw her face hot with lust, almost blank of expression, and as tempo increased less and less sane.

Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah-

She made squeaky gasps as she was absolutely drilling my brains out.

Every hit made a loud slap sound and a splash of semen I was filled with.

I forgot to mention. I came several times.

...

At this point, I was half conscious just laying in the chair letting Rica have her way with me, shaking from repeated inserts, head on the side... My eyes felt glassy, I wasn't blinking, I wasn't thinking, just drooling.

Finally, I got what I *deserved*.

Yes. Oh, yes.

...

She came two more times in my pussy.

When the mad tempo halted I saw her standing next to my head.

She took it and tugged it towards her crotch. Her *predator* was vertical, cum was seeping from it and dripping to the floor. It was twitching.

My sex-liquefied brain made my throat suddenly feel dry and I took the only way to quench that thirst...

I licked Rica's dick.

"Mmmm... Did I finally break you? Gooodd giiiirlll- Mm..."

She gasped, something was different. I looked at the base of her shaft where I ended up.

Saw a slit in it. She had no sack there but something resembling a pussy. O-oh...

I let my tongue in uninvited and felt her legs quiver. It tasted meaty and salty.

A cock-pussy, wow...

She grabbed me by the neck and I tumbled off the chair, landed in a stain of our cum.

I eagerly got closer and pulled at the sides of the slit revealing a reddish crevasse. I shoved my tongue into it, wincing from the taste and smell. Give it to me, oh yes...

Meanwhile, she was stroking herself, I felt wetness from above land on the top of my skull.

I continued tasting her for a good while.

"Achh! Shhhh, mm..."

She stroked the side of the face that was hurting from her earlier blow.

Her slimy fingertips brushed on my skin, my lips.

She was in my hair now, she held me firmly.

"I need to mark you... Ffffffuck. Let me."

"W-what?"

I asked my voice dull from the haze I was in.

Rica groaned and slid a finger inside her pussy.

First at the bottom of her rift, then moved it to the upper end of it. I watched, enchanted, as she applied pressure and a few yellow drops leaked out.

"Let. Me."

She hissed in absolute demand. There was a sort of comfort, she could destroy me following her destructive urges, but only if I allowed it.

However...

"It's unfair..."

I whined.

"You ravaged my body and raped my mind... Now you ask for permission?"

I stuck my finger in her pussy to lick the new wetness. Overwhelming.

"You let me do that... It's your own fault, human waste."

She spat out.

Oh, she wanted it, wanted it *bad*.

Through the bone-...

HESITATING? YOU THINK ANYTHING THAT CAN BE DONE TO YOU MATTERS? YOU'RE WORTHLESS, SO WORTHLESS, NOTHING CAN TAINT YOU MORE-

I involuntarily tilted my head trying to withstand that terrible noise reverberating inside my skull.

Something, I need something right now, I must not let that *thing* hatch!

"Do it! Defile me..."

I exhaled in desperation.

"Mmm-yes, good b-bitch..."

Rica *pressed* and a yellow stream arced down to my body.

Her urine was hot...

A drop of it got into my eye and I closed it. My wounds started burning from contact.

Well, this is kind of weird but... Nothing to fuss about.

I opened my mouth and caught some of her piss.

Bleh.

...

Rica giggled. Grabbed my neck and slammed me into the floor, into the wet wood.

Guh!

She immobilized me with a strike to my core. Claws cut my skin.

How did she keep doing it with those harmless-looking light-pink nails???

Crimson lined my rib cage, stomach, hands.

She hit me again and again...

Deserved...

She crushed my wrist by landing on it with her knee. I screamed.

She kicked me... Several times.

...

I wanted to black out but I couldn't yet.

When she stopped beating me, I spent a while just breathing, a rasped breath.

Through half-closed eyelids, I saw her looming over me and admiring what she had done.

Oh, she was stroking and fingering herself.

Right...

Surely, it's over-

She lifted the upper part of my body, holding me by the wrists. I wriggled and whined out of pain.

She shoved her thing in my mouth and fucked me, slowly.

That sudden gentleness even in this barbaric form was kind of worse than unhinged cruelty, for some reason.

She was enjoying herself, with quiet, long moans.

Until Rica pulled out with a squeak and sprayed my body with cum.

She rubbed her cock on my neck for a bit, then went for my armpit, pleasuring herself with it.

I blanked about the time when her tiny tongue touched me anally.

<...>

<...>

<...>

Soft breeze on my skin?

I blinked and almost instantly reeled from aches and discomfort.

I hugged my broken wrist and teared up. It hasn't healed yet?

I got up on my knees.

I was where she left me. I *reeked*.

I sobbed for a bit.

Rica was on the other chair, the one she hadn't soiled with me...

The dress was back on, hiding her torture equipment. She was lazily sipping a familiar cocktail.

"You might want to dip into the sea. You stink."

She said, sounding more like a spoiled child, than a fucked up sexual sadist.

I don't remember if I consented to being physically assaulted...

I sighed and wincing from hurt descended towards the waves. It still resembled the middle of the day.

I got into the sea, got far enough to have myself submerged to the shoulders and let the element console me.

I washed my face, too.

When hundreds of minor injuries started to seriously sting from the saltwater, I got out and sat on the sand feeling... Devastated.

It was nice...

Rica was here too.

I said nothing to her.

At some point, she hugged me from behind.

"Oh no, you don't look good!"

She gasped and giggled.

She touched my injuries, just with the very tips of her fingers.

"What kind of monster could have done this to you?"

She teased.

"Don't play with your food."

I said through my teeth.

Her slender, warm body shielded me from the breeze, her skirt was silk-soft.

I hated how pleasant it was, and loved it too.

Rica kissed my neck.

"Oh, c'mon, you liked it."

I sighed.

Memories of the recent past flushed into my head.

"I did."

I responded finally.

I was brought back into reality from all the thoughts flooding my mind by... Pink toenails?

I blinked. Rica was sitting at my side, one leg lifted, her foot right in front of me.

"You like those, don't you?"

Tease, tease, tease.

Mmm, sure.

I indulged and put my lips on one of the pretty toes.

She giggled.

"Ahh! Tickleees! You perveeeeeert-..."

And so on.

Later I let her curl on my lap and we spent stars know how long not doing anything at all.

I witnessed a triple sunset as the suns went their separate ways.

I stood up. Rica looked at me with an inquiry.

"I have to go."

I said. Pathways formed in front of me. I let the generator matter flow through me, restoring my battered body.

She stood up as well.

"Stay. Be my toy. Let me break you again."

She said with an emotionless voice.

Her eyes shimmered with cruelty. Oh, part of me wanted to stay, to taste seed and blood in my mouth. I could stay with her for all eternity, let her reward me with endless punishment, lose myself in corrupted lust...

But I had to go.

"I can force you to remain here..."

A hint of emotion in her words.

She swiped with her hand. Pathways closed.

"You won't win. Millions of years of experience battling other foresters, moulding worlds..."

"But you cannot win against me, not for long..."

"How about we find out."

She almost hissed.

I unexpectedly turned to her, took her by the sides of her face and put my forehead against hers.

The infestation wriggled and Rica recoiled.

Her eyes were wide with fear.

I grabbed her by the waist and gave her a passionate kiss.

"Goodbye."

I said quietly.

"Please! Don't leave me! I cannot be alone... Not again!"

"They all hate me..."

"I destroyed any l-love they had!"

"Please..."

She... Wasn't manipulating me?

Her misery was genuine.

As were her tears.

A pristine facade. A sadism-manifest beneath, a grotesque ocean...

There was a third Rica, beneath... Merely a sad, lonely woman.

"I am dying... But I cannot die. I just keep dying..."

"Don't..."

The world spiralled around my extended arm into a vortex of chaos painted black with generator blood.

"Name... At least tell me your name!"

She cried out.

I looked at her with sadness...

"Iris."

I breathed out.

And disappeared.

<...>

Violence.

Sex.

Sorrow.

Violence.

Sex.

Sorrow.

Violence.

Sex.

Sorrow.

<...>

Shattered bones, nasty liquids, chilling desolation of the dead worlds.

Searing blood, hallucinations, madness...

A double-ended spiral, a starving Ouroboros reaching to consume itself, never being able to...

<...>

From world to world, I went, meeting the foresters, experiencing the tsunami after tsunami of my emotions...

The desires, delightful and carnal...

I never intended to but I came to visit Noelle again. And Rica.

Once, only once, I got them together in one world, with me. They despised each other but had to make a truce to paint that world with my liquids.

Noelle was more of a force of nature than a person, she didn't really know or cared about her actions, she just *acted* driven by urges and malformed instincts.

Rica, oh, she was fully aware. And she doubled down on her cruelty, which was her wall to protect herself from her kinder selves...

Both of them? Too much even for me. Did I dream of giving myself to that duo again? I sure did. But I was too afraid.

I would get high with Kaede, laugh with him counting stars on our skin.

I even found Gabriella and let her play with me, lure me into her labyrinth of games, until I got to where she has isolated herself.

She was scared of other people, even if they weren't foresters, but pretended to be superior to them.

She could very easily become unreachable, but she was lonely too, and that was her way of keeping a sort of contact...

So I did what she truly wanted, a need she would have never admitted having to herself.

An honest interaction.

Okay, fine, I'll admit, I fucked her and made her submit, in the end.

No more mind games for her as I fingered all that IQ out of her, ha.

I avoided Thomas, Piotr, Monica, though I would find myself at their shores again and again.

<...>

Lina...

I avoided reaching a state that would lead me to Lina and I knew she didn't try to find me as well.

<...>

I *had* to never see her again...

<...>

I think I was laughing.

I was on my knees, my body was all red from hundreds of open wounds.

Around me, corpses.

8884 in one hand, a half of a hypersonic blade in the other.

My orifices, leaking.

Between my legs the remains of a creature resembling an insect of sorts, a part of it inside me.

I didn't knew how I got here, which forester or which world was at fault, I couldn't even guess what happened.

Even if I could begin guessing.

At that point any deeper thought would wake *it* and I kind of ran out of options to keep it from hatching.

I stood up.

I laughed again.

This was... Enough. I had my fun.

My body, my mind, they all got what they needed. Two hundred years of unfelt emotions were properly and thoroughly *felt*...

Except one.

My eye twitched.

I jammed my hand into my skull, laughing like a maniac I was.

I grabbed the parasite and started dragging it out of there.

It was... Bigger than expected, I pulled metres and metres of it... I think I laughed as my skull cracked like a shell of an egg and black liquid poured out of me.

My demon...

It grew outside me and filled the world...

<...>

I was floating in the red mist, holding on to 8884.

In front of me a shadowy wriggling mass, a centipede the size of Saturn.

Staring down at me without eyes.

It asked a question.

And made a demand.

Iris.

But how do I do that?!

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I cried with absolute fear.

It was me.

I served it.

My ancestor. My guardian. My love. My hate. My past. My future...

A cosmic monstrosity.

I know?

A feeling.

A direction.

I always knew.

A way out.

Not death, but birth.

I laughed.

I closed my eyes and connected with a sense of direction I was given back when I was still dead.

It was pointing everywhere and nowhere.

I knew.

I always knew.

I was the centre.

I was the singularity.

All directions met in me.

All directions led away from me.

Of course...

The monstrosity waited.

I raised 8884.

Turned it around.

Aimed it at my chest.

I laughed.

It was hard to reach and pull the trigger.

It was not designed for this.

Bright flash burning a silhouette of monstrosity into my retinas.

And then...

<...>

<...>

<...>

Slightly damp grass caressed me.

I stood up, shivering as I was still naked.

I was just near the SUNTG-14, a couple steps and I could have touched its unassuming shell.

I knew I was basically inside the bubble universe since it occupied a radius of 333.3 meters around the generator.

It was calling me, whispers of a thousand worlds. I could have gone back if I wished to.

But the generator couldn't offer me what I needed right now.

I touched my body.

I did it. I smuggled it out of the place of wish fulfillment.

I laughed.

I never believed to have that body outside the bubble.

It couldn't be true.

But it was.

I laughed, I couldn't stop laughing. And crying.

Once I calmed down, I realized that I really didn't like being naked with the temperature being as low as it was.

Oh.

What am I even doing?

I giggled madly.

I got fingers inside my pussy and awakened the copious seed of the generator inside me, granted me by the 'generously' by the foresters.

I couldn't stop laughing.

Warmth and energy rushed through me.

I stretched in pure satisfaction, smiling at clicks my form made.

Now...

I picked up 8884. Here, in the Universe Major, it wasn't capable of much.

And that wouldn't do...

I found the clamps and opened 8884 up.

Inside found a box, a miniature topology generator, a Universe Micro.

All this universe did was birth ammunition...

I put my hand on my plexus solaris and applied pressure.

I vomited regurgitated generator seed all over 8884.

It sizzled...

I reassembled 8884 and picked it up. Heavy, fucking heavy.

This... Won't do.

I stretched my arms, feeling the generator blood flow inside them.

Now I could wield the weapon with a single hand.

My other hand... I put it against sharp protrusion in 8884, and tore a jagged gash.

I bled black and let it cover the whole of my arm.

I whisked it and molded it into a crescent blade-like limb, over a meter long.

I laughed.

<...>

I blew a kiss toward the generator, turned around and made my way towards the forest.

The false trees parted to ease my journey out...

It took maybe ten minutes to reach the beginning of the real forest.

<...>

A helicopter was there and so was my handler.

I laughed.

"What the..."

Her eyes were wide with fear. I don't think she could recognize me.

Bullets from her pistol pierced my body in four places.

I bled black.

I dashed to towards the girl and hacked her again and again with my crescent.

I tasted her hot blood from the blade. Mmm...

I hopped into a helicopter...

<...>

Pitch black, shiny surface one story high building ahead of me.

Allward Coop. HQ North...

The remains of the helicopter blazed behind me.

Knowledge of access codes to the Allward's airspace could only get me so far before MC realized something was wrong and the antiair was engaged.

A bunch of holes began opening on the side of the building to deploy defenses that would rip my beautiful new body to shreds.

I had maybe a second.

A blinding white beam from 8884... I lashed the side of the HQ with it.

A cold air rushed from the scar left by the beam.

The steel and glass of the facade didn't exactly melt... It's like it rotted as atomic bonds were torn apart.

Sirens began to blare.

A good dozen of security CEAC's appeared, and I cut them up to pieces.

They had killtech, but I had generator blood... They were no match to me.

I laughed.

I may have been the worst of them, but they didn't deserve to receive mercy just as well.

Now, a real challenge...

Three Allward Coop. combat fighters.

In a triangle formation they flashed above me, peppering me with a rain of micro missiles.

The yard exploded.

I used my blade hand to create an umbrella of the dark matter to shield me from the destructive force, so all I've lost is that limb.

I generated a new arm, tossed 8884 to the ground, and ripped my stomach open.

I pulled one of the 'compensation capsules' out of my intestines.

With a corner of my eye I saw the formation turn around. Now!

I crushed the 'compensation capsule' and threw it above me, as high as my body powered by dark matter could manage

Sky it up.

Force threw me to the ground as a sphere of absolute energy imploded.

I saw the fighters get razed by the shockwave.

The sound of them crashing was completely was lost in low boom that followed paradox that existed in the sky for a fraction of a second.

Shivering, I stood up.

I was bleeding from ears, eyes, and nose, black and red.

I laughed.

In the distance I saw a skyline of the nearby city get whipped by the violent pulse.

Oh, the destruction...

Above me, the air glowed faintly in yellow.

Limping, I dragged myself into the damaged HQ.

Inside the lights were flickering, I smelled the ozone and burning plastic.

I heard the screams and panicked voices of terrified drones of the cooperative.

I smiled.

I went from room to room, from meeting hall to meeting hall, situation rooms, armory, server stations...

And killed. Killed all I could.

My body froze as I saw his face in the corridor.

No... Cannot be... He's... He's still alive.

Trapped under an iron rack, his leg crushed by it.

Side of his face had fresh burns. He was whimpering.

My heart rate increased.

So that's how I felt about the abuser that tortured me for years.

I felt disgusted and weak, my entire body wanted to get away.

But my mind...

Only vengeance was on it.

"Hi..."

I said, my tone that of nectar.

"Don't remember me?"

"Well..."

"I'm a friend of Ms. Saber's. Doesn't ring a bell? Number five, three, six, eight."

"Oh yes. *That* Saber."

I took his hand and twisted it until bones cracked and sharp ends sticked out of his skin.

He made sounds like an animal.

I heard this kind of bellowing many times before.

Deeply unpleasant sound.

When it wasn't his voice, that is.

I pulled out a wriggling *thing* from my ear and tossed it on his body.

The *thing* stung him to release an immobilizing toxin and began laying eggs right into his living flesh.

His voice broke. He screamed so much his vocal cords were too damaged.

Now he could only make whistling, raspy whine.

I leaned down to him and peeled off his eye lids. Crushed one the eyeballs with the 8884's barrel tip.

Then spat on him.

I was done.

"I don't even want to watch your agony. You're nothing. You don't matter."

I left.

<...>

I caught up with the head of MC in the evacuation tunnel.

"Baby... Heh, heh. You're mad at me?"

The monster said with a weak smile and trembling voice.

8884 rotted his legs off.

I shattered his hands as well, so he couldn't crawl.

Just in case.

"Yeah, nah. I only hate this universe that birthed filth like you."

"You're just a symptom of the true rot."

"I'm simply here to make you die in pain. I suppose I could torture you until you lost your sanity. I wonder how long you would last, a week?"

"But what's the point, really..."

"You know, I treated you pretty well, all things considered..."

"But a shitty *female* like you has no mental capacity to comprehend just how *merciful* I was to you, isn't it?"

He went vile.

He knew he wasn't getting away.

His face warped with shock as I jammed my fingers into my ear and pulled out another *thing*.

"What the fuck?!"

I spasmed and dropped to my knees next to shrieking body of another of the many torturers I had.

Tears of terror and relief rained down my face.

I sobbed.

He made me capture men for him and I had to watch him... Watch him...

... t-those poor guys.

I didn't feel much at a time, but the barrier #59 let me experience what I missed out on.

I was powerless...

No matter how much pain he suffered, he would never receive what he deserved.

His debt was infinite.

And I'll have to live with that.

Still crying, I dragged myself away from him.

I rot the hole in steel door and used the ladder to climb up, finding myself in a meadow a short distance from the HQ.

I looked at a smouldering building. People started gathering at the perimeter to stare at the destruction.

I laughed sharply, desperately, madly. Still with tears in my eyes.

I pointed 8884 at the ruined HQ and kept pouring the rotting light on it until the den of monsters was gone.

<...>

It's okay. It's okay.

I will kill them all.

There are still so much to do. HQ East, HQ West, HQ South. HQ Central...

Hundreds of clandestine sites and private prisons.

<...>

I laughed.